Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
| Photo Credit: ANI
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 15 dismissed ideas that electoral bonds have been bought by many corporates to “save themselves” from investigative businesses’ probes, arguing there’s a chance that these bonds had been both transferred to regional events or have been donated to the ruling get together earlier than the mentioned probes started.
Speaking at The India Today Conclave 2024, Ms. Sitharaman mentioned it was a “huge assumption” that the cash was given by corporations after an Enforcement Directorate (ED) search. She was responding to a question whether or not bond purchases by 14 of the highest 30 company electoral bond purchasers revealed to this point, may very well be construed as a type of “protection” from probes they confronted by some investigative company.
Electoral bonds knowledge | Full record of donors and recipient political events
“For all you know, that money was given earlier and yet, we went knocking at their door. Am I making sense? No?!… What if the companies gave the money and after that, we still went and knocked at their doors through the ED… Is that a probability or not?” the Minister mentioned.
“Second assumption in that is, are you sure they have given it to the BJP? They probably gave it to the regional parties. What makes you assume so many things and build a narrative? The government has given and the State Bank has done its job as per the orders of the Supreme Court. Now you do any hair splitting on it, but do it without assumptions of this nature,” she emphasised, including that “smart hard-working research will do good rather than lazy journalism”.
Stressing that she was not criticising the Supreme Court’s verdict on electoral bonds, she admitted that the system was not good, however mentioned her predecessor, late Arun Jaitley, had introduced this scheme as an enchancment over the earlier system of electoral funding.
“Was the system before this 100% perfect? No… At least the funds that go to parties must go through accounts that is why electoral bonds’ money is going from accounts to party accounts. At least, the money that reaches a party, whichever party it is, reaches in white form. It’s not a perfect system but you have moved from a ‘wild law-unto-themselves’ kind of a system, where everybody did what they wanted,” she mentioned.
“A system which is not perfect from a system which was completely imperfect, was consciously brought in so at least one aspect of it would be cleaner. Now, in the wisdom of the Supreme Court, they thought this is not the way to go about it. Alright. Till a better system comes, what is there? We have returned to the old era that ‘do as you feel like – pay in cash, cheque, or give something else’,” the Minister mentioned.
Any future legislation on electoral funding should incorporate the teachings from this episode, Ms. Sitharaman mentioned, underlining that “transparency will have to be progressively better” than every earlier system.
