Don’t rejoice too soon about the Supreme Court judgment striking down the Electoral Bonds scheme. It seems the government was preparing for any eventuality. It has now put in place a mechanism to track every donation made to each political party across the country. Through any means – cash, digital transaction or through cheques. This is unprecedented.
The method is rather simple: All donors will now be required to divulge transaction-wise details to the income tax authorities of donations they make to political parties. Through a revised annual return form. They won’t have to name the parties they donated to. But, that they need not. The Income Tax department and other enforcement agencies have all the tools and power to match the transactions and figure out which party got the money.
Ostensibly, this is to catch taxpayers who falsely claim to have donated to political parties.
The Union government and its agencies will have all this data. But not the citizens. This is exactly why the Electoral Bonds scheme has been shut down by the Supreme Court. Because the Centre could get information on donors and benefiting parties from the State Bank of India but no one else would ever come to know. The Supreme Court, in its order, ruled that citizens deserve to know which companies fund politicians and political parties.
The Electoral Bonds scheme might be dead, but the Narendra Modi government has now spread the dragnet far wider. Without a new regulation or law. Just a minor tweak in forms for citizens and taxpayers to fill up.
The Union laws do not even allow the Election Commission to independently review the accounts of political parties or get such granular details on political funding. Well, now, you and I won’t know, the Election Commission won’t either. But the government’s enforcement arms will know which individuals and corporates are donating to opposition parties.
Remember, till just a few days ago this government was defending Electoral Bonds before the Supreme Court claiming donors’ identity should be hidden because they could be threatened by political opponents. Well. Now the government will be the only one possessing the list of every donor of political parties.
Read the latest story by The Collective’s members, Tapasya and Nitin Sethi.
PS: We take pride that the collective’s investigations (you can read the 10-part expose conducted over two years here) helped dig out the evidence that convinced the Supreme Court that the Electoral Bonds scam must be shut down. But this new story tells us we cannot stop being vigilant. On the day the judgment came, we should have been rejoicing. Instead, when a whistleblower alerted us to this new threat to Indian democracy, we put our heads down to get the story out soonest. Keep us going, consider donating to The Reporters’ Collective.