Political finance covers all funds that are raised and spent for political purposes. Such purposes include all political contests for voting by citizens, especially the election campaigns for various public offices that are run by parties and candidates.

India’s political finance regime is plagued by four major infirmities:

• Huge amount of accounted cash that lubricates the activities of both parties and candidates.
• No transparency regarding political contributions. Identities of both the giver and the receiver are often masked.
• Political parties are not subjected to any form of independent audit, which renders their stated accounts as fictional and dramatic.
• Powers of Election Commission as outlined in the Representation of the People Act are outdated.

Government has introduced the following measures through budget proposalsand other executive and legislative actions:

• Demonetization of high denomination notes of ?500 and ?1000. This was expected to flush out unaccounted cash used in political activities and thus will bring down role of money power in elections.
• Proposed a ceiling of ?2,000 on the amount of cash donation that a political party can receive from an individual in a year.
• Political parties would be entitled to receive donations by cheque or digital mode from their donors.
• A new scheme of Electoral Bonds.
• Every political party would have to file its Income Tax return within the prescribed time limit in order to enjoy tax exemptions. It is aimed to bring about greater transparency and accountability in political funding, while preventing future generation of black money.

There have been sufficient loopholes left unplugged and new ones created which has caused dramatic mismatch between what ails political finance in India and the government’s reform measures. For e.g. “Electoral Bond” funds will flow through the banking system (rather than under the table), corporations are neither obliged to disclose their purchases nor are parties required to report their deposits.

In light of measures taken by government to fight black money and to ensure complete transparency in political funding, political parties should be brought under RTI because:

• Through RTI, all the masks shielding the transparency will come out.
• It will improve internal functioning and cleanse the system of parties. This will result in more clean funding.
• It will bring automatic check on parties as they will be questioned not only in courts of law but also in court of citizens where their expert lawyers may not bail them out.

Political Parties’ response on inclusion under RTI Act:

• Political Parties have expressed their displeasure towards the RTI on grounds such as ‘snooping and spying’ and ‘interference in internal affairs of parties’. RTI Act would adversely affect their ‘internal working and political functioning’.
• Also, they have claimed that they are transparent because their finances are already in the public domain, as under the law they have been submitting their income tax returns to the IT department.

Conclusion:

• Political parties represent citizens of the country at various levels of the government. They voice people’s demands and needs in the administrative sphere and therefore serve as the link between citizens and the government. Thus, if RTI is not extended to political parties, the attempt to make a foolproof transparent system will be in vain.