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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who proudly says during his visits abroad, “Main Gandhi ke desh se hoon (I’m from Gandhi’s country),” should revisit the Mahatma’s apprehensions, which he expressed on September 17, 1931, that political parties would run the risk of using a lot of money only on managing elections. He described as atrocious a candidate spending Rs 60,000-1,00,000 in a poor country like India. Gandhi’s sharp observations on election expenditure were made in his speech delivered in the Federal Structure Committee of the second Round Table Conference held in London.
Those apprehensions assume momentous significance when the BJP has got slightly more than Rs 52,000 crore from the electoral bond scheme introduced by the Modi regime in 2017, while opposition parties like Congress got only Rs 952 crore. Ninety-two years after he made those observations, India is witnessing the staggering amount of money collected by the BJP during the Modi regime and the huge quantum it spends for, in the words of Gandhi, “managing elections”.
The prime minister also extols Lal Bahadur Shastri and has never uttered a word against him in the manner in which he criticises Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. He should also seriously revisit the report of the Santhanam Committee established by Shastri in 1962, during his tenure as home minister, to look into the magnitude of corruption in India and recommend measures to prevent it. It was the first committee in independent India set up to examine the gathering crisis of corruption and suggest remedial measures. The prescient recommendation of the Committee, that “…all political parties should keep a proper account of their receipts and expenditure and publish annually an audited statement of such accounts giving details of all individual receipts”, is of monumental significance in the context of the commencement of the adjudication of the electoral bond scheme by the Supreme Court.
The attorney general for India has taken the bizarre stand that citizens do not have the fundamental right to know the source and volume of funds received by political parties. The Santhanam Committee made the far-reaching recommendation that there should be a law mandating political parties to disclose the details of funds received. It observed, “We do not see why any political party should object to this provision, and as it may not be easy to ensure compliance through voluntary agreement, simple legislation obliging the keeping of such accounts and its publication may be necessary.”
While the Santhanam Committee upheld in the early 1960s that there should be legislation requiring political parties to put an account of money received in the public domain, the Modi regime defends an opaque electoral bonds system through the instrumentality of law, and denies the right of people to know about those funds, which political parties use for participating in elections to get access to power.
It is worthwhile to dive a little deeper into the Santhanam Committee report and look at its farsighted observations on the root cause of corruption. It pointed out that “the public belief in the prevalence of corruption at high political levels has been strengthened by the manner in which funds are collected by political parties, especially at the time of elections.” Acknowledging frankly that “political parties cannot be run and elections cannot be fought without large funds”, it unequivocally asserted that “these funds should come openly from the supporters or sympathisers of the parties concerned.”
The Santhanam Committee’s stress on the point that accounts of political parties giving details of all individual receipts of funds should be published for the information of the people of India, and that such funds should be transferred openly, need to be flagged by the lawyers in the Supreme Court arguing in favour of transparent process through which political parties should get funds.
It is instructive to note that the Santhanam Committee, in fact, took the stand that corporations should be barred from funding political parties: “We consider that in Indian conditions, companies should not be allowed to participate in politics through their donations.” It observed that “after the matter was debated at length during the discussion on the Companies (Amendment) Act of 1960, it was decided to permit such donations subject to restrictions of amount and condition of publication.” However, it strongly opined, “We do not think that this is sufficient and feel that nothing but a total ban on all donations by incorporated bodies to political l parties and purposes will clear the atmosphere.”
It is educative to note that the Santhanam Committee suggested public funding of political parties, rather than corporate funding. It felt that if people would fund political parties, corruption related to election expenditure would be eradicated. It stated, “If even one family in three pays one rupee a year to a political party, the total annual contribution will be more than what is needed for all legitimate purposes of all political parties in India.” A novel idea, indeed. It then referred to the reluctance and inability of the parties to make small collections on a wide basis and described their desire to resort to shortcuts through large donations as the major source of corruption, and even the suspicion of corruption.
These are very profound observations, in the context of the massive funds the BJP got through electoral bonds and the possibility of a corresponding increase in corruption in India on account of that opaque funding. The legal and constitutional validity of electoral bonds should be examined keeping in mind the thoughtful observations of the Santhanam Committee.
S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K.R. Narayanan.
