Political Funding

A top court bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud on Friday took the note of the submissions made by senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan and listed the PILs for July 22

Here is the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for today

Is there such a thing in India?

Union minister Nitin Gadkari has said it was not possible to run a political party without funds, and added that the Centre had introduced the electoral bonds scheme, now struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, in 2017 with a "good intention". The senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said all political parties need to sit together and deliberate if the Supreme Court gives any further direction on the matter. He made the comments at an event organised by a media house in GIFT City near Gandhinagar on Friday. "When Arun Jaitely was (Union finance) minister, I was part of that discussion (regarding electoral bonds). No party can survive without resources. In some countries, governments fund political parties. There is no such system in India. Thus, we chose this system of financing political parties," said Gadkari on a question about electoral bonds. He noted the main intention behind introducing electoral bonds was that political parties get funds directly, but th

Electoral bonds echo an old colonial playbook, and unless those issues are addressed, they will remain a gateway to corruption

Future Gaming and Hotel Services spread its bets across national and regional players

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale on Sunday said the electoral bonds is an "experiment" and time will tell how beneficial and effective it has been. The RSS Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) on Sunday re-elected Dattatreya Hosabale for the post of 'Sarkaryavah' (general secretary) for three years. The Election Commission on Thursday released the electoral bonds data, with a number of billionaire tycoons and lesser-known entities being among the buyers. From steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal to billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel, Anil Agarwal's Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, and lesser-known Future Gaming and Hotel Services were among the prominent buyers of the now-scrapped electoral bonds for making political donations. Asked about concerns being raised on the electoral bonds issue and claims that they were purchased to get favours, Hosabale said the Sangh has not yet discussed about it as the electoral bonds is an "experiment". "It ...

The JD(S) received bonds worth Rs 89.75 crore, including Rs 50 crore from Megha Engineering, the second largest purchaser of electoral bonds

The Supreme Court granted the EC's request for the unique identification numbers that will help link donors to the donations made to political parties under the now-scrapped electoral bond scheme

The ruling party received Rs 6,060 crore in electoral bonds, constituting 47% of the total donations, followed by TMC Rs 1,609.50 crore (12.6%) and Congress Rs 1,421.9 crore (11.1%)

Future Gaming emerged as the top electoral bond donor, donating Rs 1,368 crore to political parties between April 2019 and January 2024, in data released by the Election Commission

America's electoral financing system is based on private fundraising and emphasis on transparency, with a candidate allowed to accept up to USD 3,300 from any individual while the limit for party committees is USD 41,300, according to a top US Federal Election Commission official. Ellen L Weintraub, Vice Chair of the US's Federal Election Commission, spoke to PTI in an interview taken following the recent landmark ruling by India's Supreme Court to scrap the central government's electoral bonds scheme of anonymous political funding, calling it "unconstitutional" and ordering disclosure of the bond's donors, amount and recipients by March 13. We have a system that is based on private fundraising, but public transparency. Most of the money is raised privately, but it does have to be disclosed on a regular basis, Weintraub said. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is the independent regulatory agency charged with administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance law. The FEC,

Electoral bonds: The Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgement on Thursday, annulling the electoral bonds scheme for political funding

State Bank of India (SBI) has issued Electoral Bonds worth Rs 16,518 crore in 30 tranches since the inception of the scheme in 2018, Parliament was informed on Monday. The objective of the Electoral Bond Scheme is to ensure clean tax-paid money is coming into the system of political funding through proper banking channels, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said in a written reply in Lok Sabha. "The total value of Electoral Bonds purchased (Phase-I to Phase-XXX) from State Bank of India is about Rs 16,518 crore. No GST or any other taxes/cess are charged from the purchaser on the purchase of Electoral Bonds," he said. Sharing details, Chaudhary said, the commission paid to SBI by the Government of India for issuance and redemption of Electoral Bonds from Phase I to Phase XXV is about Rs 8.57 crore while the amount paid by the government to Security Printing & Minting Corporation of India Ltd (SPMCIL) till date is about Rs 1.90 crore. With regard to Rs 5,000 crore ...

Japanese prosecutors made their first arrest on Sunday in connection with a major political slush funds scandal that has rocked Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's already unpopular government. Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office apprehended former vice-education minister Yoshitaka Ikeda on suspicion of failing to report fundraising proceeds he received from his faction within the governing Liberal Democratic Party, according to officials and local media reports. Ikeda's faction, which used to be led by the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who was assassinated in 2022, has remained the largest and most influential within Kishida's ruling party. The faction is suspected of failing to report more than 600 million yen (USD 4.15 million). The former minister was accused of not reporting the 40 million yen (about USD 276,500) he received from the faction as kickback from political event ticket sales, a violation of political funds control law, media reports say. Prosecutors declined

Party sources said the Congress will soon sell merchandise, such as caps signed by Rahul Gandhi, mugs and t-shirts. The party said the initiative is inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's Tilak Swaraj Fund

Facebook and Instagram will require political ads running on their platforms to disclose if they were created using artificial intelligence, their parent company announced on Wednesday. Under the new policy by Meta, labels acknowledging the use of AI will appear on users' screens when they click on ads. The rule takes effect Jan 1 and will be applied worldwide. The development of new AI programmes has made it easier than ever to quickly generate lifelike audio, images and video. In the wrong hands, the technology could be used to create fake videos of a candidate or frightening images of election fraud or polling place violence. When strapped to the powerful algorithms of social media, these fakes could mislead and confuse voters on a scale never seen. Meta Platforms Inc and other tech platforms have been criticised for not doing more to address this risk. Wednesday's announcement which comes on the day House lawmakers hold a hearing on deepfakes isn't likely to assuage those ...

The Supreme Court on Monday referred to a five-judge Constitution bench a batch of pleas challenging the validity of the electoral bond scheme for political funding of parties. A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said they have received an application that the matter being urgent be sent to a larger bench for a conclusive judgement. The bench said the matter will be taken up on October 30, the date of hearing fixed earlier. Earlier, the bench had taken note of the submissions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan that the matter needed adjudication before the electoral bond scheme opens for the 2024 general elections and had decided to fix it for final hearing. There are four PILs pending on the issue. One of the PIL petitioners had said in March that so far Rs 12,000 crore has been paid to political parties through electoral bonds and the two-third of the amount has gone to one major political party. Electoral bonds have been pitched a

Electoral bonds worth Rs 10,246 crore have been sold by the State Bank of India (SBI) since the instrument was launched in March 2018. Electoral bonds have been pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties as part of efforts to bring transparency to political funding. In an RTI reply, SBI said the majority of these bonds were of one crore while less than 10 per cent of subscriptions were of lower denominations -- ten lakh, one lakh, ten thousand and one thousand. About 93.5 per cent of total bonds sold were in the denomination of Rs 1 crore, according to an RTI filed by Chandra Shekhar Gaur. Only 0.25 per cent in value terms were from one lakh, ten thousand and one thousand denominations. SBI has been authorised to issue and encash electoral bonds through 29 authorised branches. The authorised SBI branches include those in Lucknow, Shimla, Dehradun, Kolkata, Guwahati, Chennai, Patna, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Srinagar, Gandhinagar, Bhopal, Raipur, and Mumbai.

Ahead of assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the government on Monday approved issuance of the 23rd tranche of electoral bonds that will open for sale on November 9. The Gujarat assembly elections will be held in two phases on December 1 and 5, while Himachal Pradesh will go to polls on November 12. Electoral bonds have been pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties as part of efforts to bring transparency in political funding. State Bank of India (SBI), in the 23rd phase of sale, has been authorised to issue and encash electoral bonds through 29 authorised branches from November 9-15, the finance ministry said in a statement. Usually, electoral bond tranches are open for sale between 1-10 of a designated month. For instance, the 22nd tranche of bond sales took place from October 1-10, 2022 while 21st tranche was from July 1-10, 2022. Sale of the first batch of electoral bonds happened from March 1-10, 2018. The authorised SBI branches