In a letter written to Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, the election commissioner has proposed to limit cash donations to 20 per cent or ₹20 crore, whichever is lower, reported ANI.
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Moreover, the election commission has proposed to reduce anonymous political donations to ₹2,000 from ₹20,000 to guard the election process in India against black money.
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The CEC has recommended amendments to the Representation of the People (RP) Act, to change the lower limit of anonymous public donations and to reduce the lower limit of transaction amounts whose details need to be disclosed by the parties to the EC.
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As of now, the political parties have to file a contribution report to the EC for disclosing all donations above ₹20,000. Now they have to disclose the details of all the donations above ₹2,000 to the Election Commission.
Recently, a total of 284 registered unrecognised political parties (RUPPs) were delisted by the poll panel for not complying with the norm. Out of them, 253 were made inactive by the panel.
RUPPs are the newly formed parties that are registered but haven't garnered the minimum set percentage of votes in the assembly or general elections to become a state party. The parties that have never participated in the elections since their formation also come under this category.
As a part of pan-India tax evasion, the Income Tax department raided multiple states to probe the involvement of RUPP in dubious financial transactions. The action was the result of a recent recommendation from the Election Commission. The body has recently ordered the deletion of nearly 198 fraud RUPPs from the official list after they were found non-existent during physical verification.
Notably, the poll pane took action against 2,100 RUPPs for not complying with the rules and election norms. Many of the entities under this category didn't even file monetary contributions or even updated their address or name of office bearers.
(With inputs from ANI)
