)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress are two national parties yet to file details of their expenditure during the recent Lok Sabha elections to the Election Commission (EC).
Also, one of every two recognised regional parties have not given their Lok Sabha election expenditure to the poll panel. According to the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), 24 of 49 parties recognised in one or more states are yet to give their election expenditure to the EC.
The latter had stipulated a time limit of 90 days from completion of the poll process, within which all national and recognised parties need to do this. As the election results were declared on May 16, the parties should have filed their expenditure statements on or before August 14.
On September 8, the EC issued a notice to all the parties which had not done so. It was issued to three of the national parties – the Congress, BJP and the Communist Party of India (CPI) – and 46 regional parties. Following which, the CPI and 22 regional parties complied. The Congress, BJP and 24 others have not.
On Friday, ADR, an independent election watchdog, pointed to a 1996 Supreme Court judgment, Common Cause versus Union of India, stating all “political parties shall submit to the Election Commission, for its scrutiny, the details of the expenditure incurred or authorised by the parties in connection with the election of their respective candidates”.
The expenditure statement is to contain details of the total amount received as funds in the form of cash, cheques and demand drafts, and the total amount spent under the following heads at the central, state, district and constituency levels by the party — party propaganda, travel expenses, publicity expenses, miscellaneous expenses and expenses on candidates.
For the first time since that 1996 judgement, the poll panel has also asked unrecognised parties which contested to file their expenditure statements. Of 419 unrecognised parties which contested, 17 have done so. The EC has long suspected some of these unrecognised parties to be fronts for income tax fraud.
ADR said national and regional political parties should ideally file complete and correct statements of expenditure to the ECI well in time for public scrutiny, so as to encourage financial transparency.
