 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss about the electoral bonds and also the petition that has been moved by CPIM in the Supreme Court. To discuss the issue we are joined by Paranjay Guha Thakurtha who is a senior journalist. Welcome to NewsClick once again Paranjay. So before we move further into different aspects of the electoral bond what actually is the electoral bond that the government is talking about? The electoral bond is akin to what you might call a promissory note. It is a bearer note. It is similar to like a bank note. It is payable to the bearer on demand. It carries no interest and it can be purchased by any citizen of India or any company which is registered in India, any entity or group of individuals, Hindu undivided families so on and so forth. Now these bonds will have will be issued in multiples of a thousand rupees, ten thousand rupees, hundred thousand rupees, ten lakh rupees and one crore of rupees. Now there will be available at only particular branches of the state bank of India which as you know as a government owned its India's biggest bank etcetera. Now I will come to the issues one at a time but the bonds will have a life of what 15 days. Then after it has to be deposited into a specific account and this is a this is an account which has to be a pre-declared account by a political party. Now let me use the language which the finance minister has used. Now what Mr. Jaitley has said is that the electoral bonds will not bear the name of the donor that means in a sense the person who is giving the money as well as the details of the party to which this donor is giving the money will not be available to the public but it will be known to the bank. Why? Because the bank has to go through what are called KYC know your customer norms. Now this is the crux of the issue. These banks are public sector banks so in that sense if the government wants to it can know not only who is the donor but it can be in fact misused. Now you are saying they have to be disclosed these donations have to be disclosed in the balance sheets but you are not disclosing to which party this money is going to and let me just on this note read out to you what the finance minister is saying. Now all these claims are being made that it is going to introduce greater transparency in the system but he says as against the total non-transparency in the present system of cash donations whether donor the donate the quantum of donations and the nature of expenditure are all undisclosed some element of transparency would be introduced in as much as all donors declare in their accounts the amount of bonds they have purchased and all parties declare the quantum of bonds that they have received. That means how much each donor has distributed to a political party will be known only to a donor. Let me here suggest that this is by his own admission only a small step and it can be argued that this scheme like other schemes can be misused so instead of actually ensuring greater transparency in political donations it can lead to the reverse you can have to live a more opaque system you can have dummy companies front companies individuals groups of individuals trusts in the undivided families who don't have to make the records public can misuse the scheme and I won't be surprised if it does. Let's look at two things the scheme was first announced in February 2017 by Mr. Arun Jaitley it took his entire team of bureaucrats is the army of bureaucrats in north block in the minister of finance 11 months before you could he released some sets of norms about it. Now I regret to say that if you look at this particular scheme and you look at it with the other schemes that the government is done far from transparency is going to make the whole system more opaque. Yes so I mean since you're pointing out that the banks would know who are the donors and hence government can also know indirectly will it not increase the corporate influence over funding of the political parties. Undoubtedly it could especially if you look at not just the electoral bond scheme but look at the other recent amendments that have been made by the government of India in a series of laws the representation of the people act the income tax act the companies act the reserve bank of India act and the foreign contribution regulation act. Now if you look at all the changes that have been made to these acts in the last two years you'll find one earlier there was a ceiling of seven and a half percent of the net profits over a three-year period was the maximum amount that the company could donate through an electoral trust or to a political party it's for electoral trust. Now that limit has gone what does that mean theoretically a company can denote all its net profits if it wants to to a political party secondly the manner in which with retrospective effect the FCRA or the foreign contribution regulation act has been amended is clearly aimed at overturning a judgment of the Delhi High Court and it has been done with retrospective effect why you have changed actually how the you define a foreign quote unquote a foreign owned entity and and you see who's going to be the beneficiary of of this it in the biggest beneficiary is of course the Bharti Janta party also the congress is a beneficiary but which are these companies that are going to get what is very interesting you have companies that are controlled by Mr. Anil Agarwal's group the Vedanta group Stirlite Industries Agoa you have large hotel chains like Hyatt Regency you have companies in the Adani group like Adani Wilmar so I mean the whole whole DAO chemicals and and the whole situation is such that you have actually regularize the way in which you allow corporate entities which are foreign controlled and foreign owned to donate to this party which makes a travesty of the earlier provision I mean after all there was some logic behind having a provision in the representation of the people act that Indian political party should not receive foreign funding now all that has been changed and I that is one of the key elements of the petition that has been moved by the Communist Party of India Marxist in court yes yeah so I mean when they're talking about that it would legitimize the foreign donations to amendment in the foreign contribution regulation act can you elaborate more on the petition that they have moved in the supreme court and what does it talk about basically the petition of the Communist Party of India is not only challenging the way in which this retrospective amendment has been made to the foreign contribution regulation act it is also looking at one particular clause in the scheme which says only political party is registered under section 20 a 29 a I beg your pardon of the representation of the people act 1951 and have secured not less than 1% of the votes polled in the last general election the Lok Sabha election or an assembly election legislative assembly now this means that you're going to actually exclude new political parties as well as independent candidates so we'll have to wait and watch and see how the court reacts to this petition but I think if you want to summarize the main point the new schemes that have been announced by the government including notably the electoral bond scheme is not going to make the system more transparent at all then the cushion still remains that then how is government claiming that it will become more transparent you know this is a claim and let people judge whether this claim is based on any reality I mean I mean experts including people who've been working with the association for democratic reforms representatives of political parties non BJP political parties they all unanimously of the view that you are actually not creating a system which is more transparent on the contrary the system is going to become more opaque and not going to know I mean the classic case is where you say the purchaser would be allowed to buy electoral bonds only on due fulfillment of the existing know your customer norms now what does this mean this information about the purchase of the bond because it is with the bank and this bank is owned by the government say the state bank of India it won't take very much time to move from the state bank of India to the reserve bank of India to the government of India minister of finance so that would mean that the ruling party and the ruling dispensation could actually use this information to ask a donor covertly why have you donated to an opposition party and not to us I mean so this whole system can be misused we have seen how the institutions of governance in this country have been compromised and and that there is I mean all of us have every reason to be apprehensive that this scheme can be misused and can be used as covert forms of extortion and even blackmail I mean also witch hunt yes sure sure so I mean what is the alternative then what should the government what should the government have done to ensure that there is a transparency in the electoral funding or what's the entire alternative to this electoral there are so many other alternatives these have been discussed keep in mind that this electoral bond scheme has even been opposed by the election commission of India you have state funding of elections we can discuss that have a debate on that this whole issue of anonymous donations do away with that completely the whole system where you give a limit on the expenditure incurred by individual candidates of political parties but there are no limits on the on on what political parties can spend including so-called stock campaigners then the way in which the accounts of political parties are audited why don't you have auditors who are appointed by an external body by the control and auditor general or the institute of chartered accountants of India you have your own come under the purview of rti they don't come all all political parties are not coming within the purview of the right to information act but on the whole issue of auditing you have your friendly auditors auditing there's no rotation of auditors so you have a series of steps that you can take to make the funding of political parties the funding of candidates standing for elections and election campaigns far far more transparent but but is there a political will on the part of our our our our politicians i mean do they all want it whenever and these issues are not old they have been discussed for years and years and years some of these proposals have been discussed for decades and there seems to be an unwritten a tacit agreement about large sections of the political class not to do anything about it you've you've reduced the the the quantum of anonymous cash donations from 20 000 rupees to 2000 rupees but then what what is preventing uh uh uh political parties from showing in in its book of accounts that is deceived you know 10 times that amount of donations and and you're showing these entries i mean what was the justification you're saying when we have political rallies people give small donations declare them it's all very fine for the government to say we want to have a transparent system a cashless system more transactions through the banking system but so far nothing of that sort has happened okay panjeet thanks a lot let's wait and watch what the court says about it and as these things proceed we'll be coming back to you on such issue one second thank you very much thanks a lot thank you for watching news click keep following our website and our facebook page