Still too many unanswered questions about Electoral Bonds: Commodore Batra

I was happy when in the Union Budget speech in February, 2017, the then Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley started speaking about bringing transparency to the electoral funding system.

But my hopes were dashed in two minutes when he talked about the provision of anonymity of donors. Then, I came across some media reports about the Election Commission of India’s (ECI’s) alleged concerns about electoral bonds. I then decided to dig out the facts in quest for the truth.

So, first, I filed a request for information with the ECI on May 7, 2018. From the reply received, it was clear from the files that all three decision-makers, the then Chief Election Commissioner and the two Election Commissioners, had unanimously objected to not only the electoral bonds but also other amendments under the ‘Amendments in Finance Act, 2017’.

Also, the reply mentioned that the Election Commission had communicated its reservations in a letter written and delivered on May 26, 2017 to the Secretary, Legislative Department of the Union Ministry of Law and Justice and asked for their views on the matter.

So, I filed the next RTI with the Legislative Department of the Ministry of Law on June 8, 2018, attaching the documents received from the ECI, seeking again complete set of documents in the file.

From the reply, I learnt that the Legislative Department had written to the Coordination Wing of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) under the Union Ministry of Finance on July 3, 2017, asking for its views on the matter. When no reply was received, the Legislative Department sent a reminder to the Coordination Wing of the DEA on August 18, 2017.

Interestingly, on July 8, 2018, the same day I filed the RTI via e-mail, a third reminder was sent by the Legislative Department.

The reply from the Legislative Department to my RTI query was very fast and I received the documents within a week. Armed with those and also attaching the ones from the ECI, I then filed an RTI with the Coordination Wing of the DEA on June 15, 2018. In its reply, the Coordination Wing of the DEA asked me to inspect the file and its contents and I did the same on July 12.

What I found out was that the Coordination Wing of the DEA had, on July 6, 2017 and again on August 2, 2017 circulated the Legislative Department’s queries with various divisions and departments of the Ministry of Finance including the Budget Division which directly deals with electoral bonds.

However, there were no responses in the file. After I filed my RTI with the Coordination Wing of the DEA, they again circulated the documents to all Divisions on July 2,2018. This time, on July, 3,2018, in response to Circular, the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC) division of DEA conveyed thus: “The FSRL Division agrees with the views of the Election Commission and has no specific comments to offer”.

The Budget Division of DEA conveyed that the matter “Amendments in Finance Act 2017” is to be dealt by Department of Revenue (DOR).

Subsequently, on July 10, 2018, DEA referred the complete set of communication received from the Legislative Department of Law Ministry to DOR.

Later my RTI Application along with attached documents was also forwarded to DOR.

I followed up by filing an RTI application directly with the DOR on August 3, 2018, attaching all documents I had received from all agencies, departments and the poll panel, including the July 10 letter from the Coordination Wing of the DEA.

This is when the DOR delays started.

The Coordination wing of DOR referred my RTI to one of the wing/division of the DOR, who in turn also forwarded my RTI to another wing/division within DOR and later it was forwarded to Department of Justice of Ministry of Law & Justice.

In this passing the buck game, the query has been relayed back to the Legislative Department at least three times, irking them to the extent that the Appellate Authority, a senior bureaucrat from Legislative Department, passed a stern order on my Appeal, directing his officer to also forward the copy of the order to DoR.

On December 18, 2018, the then MoS, Finance, Pon Radhakrishnan, was replying in the Rajya Sabha to Question No: 830 of All India Trinamool Congress MP, Mohd Nadimul Haque. Haque had, amongst other questions on the electoral bonds, sought the government’s reply as to what the Modi government felt about the ECI’s concern about electoral bonds.

The MoS said that the government (Ministry of Finance) had not received any concern from the ECI. I was stunned.

Over the course of my RTIs here, I had myself attached entire set of documents received from Law Ministry and two Finance Ministry departments and shared with all the departments. How could they claim that they have not received any concerns? Also the then recently retired CEC, Om Prakash Rawat, had said in an interview that the ECI’s concerns about electoral bonds were not resolved.

I took printouts of the Rajya Sabha question and reply and filed another RTI with DEA on February 11, 2019 along with all the earlier documents as to how it was possible.

If you recall, on February 13, 2019, the last day of the Rajya Sabha’s winter session before the General Election, MP Nadimul Haque moved a privilege motion against Pom Radhakrishnan for deliberately misleading the House on the matter. But since it was the last day, no answer was provided. After the Rajya Sabha reconvened after the General Election, the current MoS, Finance, Anurag Thakur, corrected the statement, while adding that there was no intention to mislead.

As for my RTI application, the 16-month-old RTI in DOR is currently with TPL1, DBT, Ministry of Finance. I do not know when the musical chair will come to an end.

It is difficult to believe that there was no intention to mislead the Parliament considering the sequence of events I just narrated. It could be a case of systemic failure and poor governance though.

The government of the day does not appear to be entitled to any benefit of doubt. How can you remove opacity by making donations anonymous? Despite a June 2013 ruling from the Central Information Commission (CIC) that they fall within the ambit of the transparency law, political parties insist that they cannot be considered public authorities under the Act. That includes the BJP.

Petitions have been filed on the matter long back by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Common Cause and Sitaram Yechury in 2017 but the Supreme Court has been sitting on the final verdict.

Also, the entire series of Nitin Sethi’s exposes published in The Huffington Post based on my RTI queries clearly shows that transparency was the last thing on the minds of those who devised the electoral bonds system. I have a strong feeling that the scheme was planned by DOR, Ministry of Finance.

There are many unanswered questions:

1. Who piloted the electoral bonds?

2. Why hasn’t the ECI reminded the government in spite of not having received any response since May 26, 2017?

3. Why did the government not let Parliament know when the Ministry of Finance was clearly in the know of ECI’s concerns?

4. Why has the Legislative Department kept quiet after sending two reminders?

Things certainly look suspicious.

(As told to Tathagata Bhattacharya)