BJP needs to come clear on election expenditure: CPI(M)

The CPI(M) on Sunday asked BJP to come clear on its spending on "huge" rallies for ongoing assembly elections amid the ruling party's talk of transparency in political funding. Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury also claimed that "winds of change" are blowing across the country as he sought to suggest favourable poll outcome for opposition parties in the assembly polls.

"During the poll campaigns, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP have been highlighting the issue of transparency in political funding to parties. "Before taking moral positions on cleansing the political funding system, they must clear how they are funding these huge rallies...where are they getting the funds from?" Yechury asked.

The Rajya Sabha member raised the concern while speaking to reporters after CPI(M) Politburo's meeting. He sought to pick holes in Centre's budgetary proposal of restricting cash donations to political parties from individuals to Rs 2,000 and introducing 'electoral bonds' scheme to cleanse funding system, saying the reforms are "mere eyewash".

The parliamentarian contended the reforms will rather give an opening for money laundering for none will know who are the ones giving and buying the bonds except the government. "So, these are not really going to achieve the objectivesof greater transparency," he said. The Marxist leader reiterated his party's position that corporate funding to political parties should be banned to combat corruption and that there should be ceiling on expenses made by parties and not only by candidates.

He insisted that there should be a proportional representation system put in place to realise democracy's'rule of majority' concept. In the proportional representation system, a party gets seats commensurate with the percentage of votes it polls in an election.

"The Modi government has a comfortable majority in Lok Sabha with a mere 31 per cent of the polled vote share (during 2014 polls) "69 per cent of the people who had voted, voted against the BJP...democracy as a rule of the majority has not really been implemented in the country," he noted.