Corruption is just a BJP bogey

(From left) Ajit Pawar, the recently sworn-in deputy chief minister of Maharashtra; Chief Minister Eknath Shinde; Governor Ramesh Bais; Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis; and NCP leader Praful Patel at Raj Bhavan on July 2. Pic/PTI

The chicanery in Maharashtra should now have even the gullible disbelieving leaders promising to root out political corruption. Unless, obviously, they propose to introduce State funding of political parties, evolve a mechanism to establish the genuineness of their membership contributions, and ban corporate financing. The Bharatiya Janata Party, for sure, can only offer rhetoric and motivated raids on rival parties to the nation.

Jayaprakash Narayan, in Towards Free and Fair Elections, a pamphlet published before the Emergency, cautioned the nation against political financing warping democracy. He said funds were collected "mainly for Parliamentary and state elections," but also for "managing party members" and toppling Opposition governments. JP, as Narayan was popularly called, added, "The way these funds are collected carries the corruption virus from the political into several other fields."

Five decades later, the corruption virus has become even deadlier because of the Modi government. It ushered in political funding through the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018, specially designed for the BJP to gain an undue advantage over the Opposition. Donors can purchase Electoral Bonds, or EBs, from the State Bank of India and hand over these to political parties for redemption. The donor's identity remains anonymous. The Central government, it is feared, can access the SBI's data to threaten those contributing to the Opposition with dire action.

No wonder, the data of the Association for Democratic Reforms show that the BJP has had an extraordinary edge over the Opposition in gathering funds through EBs. From 2017-18 to 2020-21, four national and 15 regional parties redeemed EBs worth R6,500 crore, of which the BJP accounted for 65 per cent, or R4,200 crore. EBs now constitute the largest share of the income of political parties. In 2021-22, EBs accounted for 83 per cent of the R2,172 crore gathered by eight national parties under the category of "Unknown Sources," which essentially refers to anonymous contributions of Rs 20,000 and above. Unknown Sources accounted for 65 per cent of the income of political parties.

It should not, therefore, surprise that the BJP manages politicians and plays the toppling game, with complete abandon, in the Opposition-ruled states. Its other weapon is to use Central agencies, particularly the Enforcement Directorate (ED), to disparage, frighten and disable the Opposition by raiding and entangling its leaders in corruption cases. The Indian Express reported, in 2022, that 121 prominent politicians have been under an ED probe since 2014. Two ministers of the Delhi government, Satyendra Jain and Manish Sisodia - the former lauded for healthcare reforms and the other for boosting public education - have been in jail for months.

The BJP portrays the investigation against Opposition leaders as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's steadfast resolve to root out corruption. But these claims were rendered hollow with the induction into the Maharashtra Cabinet four Nationalist Congress Party MLAs whom the BJP had earlier accused of malfeasance. Indeed, the BJP develops amnesia about allegations of corruption against Opposition leaders as soon as they join the party. For instance, the BJP had publicly promised to investigate Himanta Biswa Sarma for corruption, but, instead, made him the Assam chief minister five years after he jumped from the Congress to the Modi bandwagon.

JP's hope of protecting democracy from the inimical impact of slush money can only be achieved by emulating European countries, which provide for State funding of parties. Building upon this model, former Chief Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi, in a 2017 interview to me, proposed a payment of R100 for every vote a party gets, and annually transfer to it an amount equivalent to the total number of votes it polled multiplied by R100. Roughly 55 crore votes were cast in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and nearly 61 crore in 2019.

"I think paying [even] R1,000 crore per annum to keep the country honest is peanuts," Qureshi said to me. This method of funding would put in disadvantage political parties born between two elections, as was the case with the AAP, which came into existence a year before the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections. To this point, Qureshi responded, "Well, when you float a new venture, you have to invest your own money, don't you?"

The 1998 Indrajit Gupta Committee and 1999 Law Commission, too, had backed State funding, albeit not of political parties but of elections. Since it is hard to track every candidate's electoral expenditure, a better idea is to finance political parties. The State's financing could be augmented by creating an Election Fund for securing contributions from individuals and corporates, incentivising them with tax breaks. Corporations should be proscribed from directly donating to political parties, and payment of membership fees to them should be linked to Aadhaar.

Until such steps are taken, corruption will remain a bogey a ruling party will summon to scare politicians into deserting its rivals, and also alienate voters from the Opposition, as Modi's BJP is unabashedly doing. In 2019, Maharashtra politician Harshvardhan Patil left the Congress for the BJP, and later said, "Now I get a good, quiet sleep at night. There is no midnight knock... no fear of any of the central agencies." So, do not factor in corruption in your voting decision next year, for you will be betrayed.

The writer is a senior journalist

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