We saw the huge uproar on Electoral Bond(EB). EBs were medium to fund elections as every party needed huge funds to contest elections, so through EBs, people could fund their favorite party. It was issued by SBI’s selected branches. They were created to promote transparency and use white money in elections. But we saw that many companies gave huge sums, some even more than their profit. So the transparency mechanism goes out. Out of the top 30 donors, 14 had got ED raids, reports claim out of 5 donors, 3 had gotten raids means it was a form of extortion.
Scenario before EBs
Before EBs, people/companies used to fund their parties through cash which may involved black money also and there was a huge scope for corruption and extortion.
Now that the Supreme Court has made EBs unconstitutional, the old regime will come back, in EBs as there was some accountability mechanism but in the old regime, no one knows who gave how much money to which political party.
Way forward
The best way forward is to restore EBs with certain modifications
- Bring EBs under the ambit of RTI, this will for parties and companies to be cautious and they won’t over-donate.
- There was certain apprehension that parties that won’t receive funds from a company may not give it contracts even if they were most eligible, I think it won’t happen as people will get to know easily that this company didn’t give money that’s why it didn’t get the contract or project and for this to happen govt have to tell why did it choose the contractor or on what basis it was chosen, so it may reduce the political vendetta concept.