New Delhi: Two finance ministry departments, the Election Commission and the Reserve Bank have no information on the consultations over electoral bonds the Centre introduced nine months ago and touted as a "game-changing" decision to clean up political funding, an RTI query has revealed.
RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak had sought from the department of economic affairs (DEA), a wing of the finance ministry, details of the number of representations it received from the public for maintaining confidentiality on political donations, photocopies of such applications and the draft of the Electoral Bond Scheme prepared for consultations.
Union finance minister Arun Jaitley had said in his budget speech on February 1 that the electoral bonds would cleanse the funding system without disclosing the identity of the donors as many had expressed reluctance to donate to political parties through bank instruments citing loss of anonymity.
The DEA referred the matter to the department of financial services (DFS), under the finance ministry, RBI and the Election Commission. The DFS followed suit, stating that the matter pertained to the RBI.
In separate responses, the RBI and the poll panel said they had no information on the consultations before the bonds were announced.
The Election Commission said: "The information sought... is not available in any material form hence cannot be provided." The RBI's reply was: "We have no information to furnish."
According to the budget announcement, the RBI Act was amended for the issuance of the electoral bonds, which would allow a donor to purchase them from authorised banks against cheques and digital payments only. They will be redeemable only in the designated account of a registered political party.
The scheme is yet to be rolled out and the process of designating banks has also not been started.
Many privy to the process of political funding maintain that the bond scheme is a smokescreen as it does not make the system any more transparent.
While the purchase of the bonds will only be through banks, neither the donor nor the recipient political party is under any compulsion to declare it.
