Next big step on political funding to bring transparency: Jaitley

New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today revealed that his government is serious about cleaning the political funding and the next big step will be on political funding to make it transparent. While inaugurating the Income Tax Day 2017 at Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi, Finance Minister said that the Series of steps taken by government are intended to widen the tax base, eliminate corruption & incentivise the honest tax payers. He said that Income Disclosure Scheme (IDA) and demonetisation were among them. “The next step is political funding. If political parties do not come for the consensus, government will go ahead with its own law on it,” said Jaitley.

He added that most of the political parties are not coming forward with the suggestions on the political funding. In this situation government may go ahead with its own set of laws to regulate it.” Even on Saturday, Mr Jaitley had called for a greater degree of transparency in political funding and said India was being funded by invisible money for 70 years and Election Commission failed to curb the use of ‘invisible money’ in it. Delivering the inaugural address at the Delhi Economics Conclave 2017 here on July 22, Finance Minister had also cirticised the political parties along with the Election Commission and said that the political system should be more transparent.

He had said that for 70 years, invisible funds created helplessness in economy, but his government is working on tracking invisible economy. “For 70 years, India’s democracy has completely been funded by invisible money; elected representatives, governments, political parties, Parliaments and I must say that the Election Commission completely failed in checking it,” Mr Jaitley had said. He had said that the need of the hour is to build political support for good economics. Without political support it is hard to achieve desired the result.