Glaring holes

I fully endorse the view of the editorial, “Truth about political funding” (April 6), that without transparency, there can be no reform. 

The editorial picks glaring holes in the recently approved Finance Bill, 2017: There are certain controversial amendments related to electoral funding. For example, the scrapping of the earlier ceiling of 7.5 per cent on the average net profit of companies in three immediate previous fiscal years for making donations to a political party; doing away with the provision of disclosing in the companies’ profit and loss account the name of the “beneficiary” political party. This means that shareholders of the donor company would be kept in dark about its political connections and the acceptance of “unaudited” cash donations up to Rs 2,000 (without any numerical transactional limits) could lead to free flow of cash receipts for the political parties. What an idea! 

What else could be expected from this government? No wonder that political parties without exception hate being subjected to public scrutiny under the Right to Information Act.

Kumar Gupt   Panchkula

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