Trudging through the narrow bylanes behind old Sangeet theatre in Secunderabad, one can reach a building in an obscure corner, which houses one of the wealthiest political parties of the state—Jago Party.
Surprised? The last declared donation received by the party stands at a whopping Rs 1 crore and the party is financially way ahead of YSR Congress, TRS or even TDP when it comes to donation receipts, submitted to the Election Commission of India.
While YSR Congress has revealed it received Rs 77 lakhs as donation, TRS showed Rs 90 lakhs, whereas TDP’s funding did not even cross Rs 18 lakhs in their last declaration, filed late last year.
Dozens of small political parties have been mushrooming across the state, many of which have come up in the last couple of years.
The number of parties has increased to 70 compared to just 35-odd unrecognized political outfits in 2009, many of whom may never contest elections, with some having just a few dozen members.
Electoral experts and analysts say this trend may just be the result of various tax exemptions rolled out when it comes to funding of political parties.
Under section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, any donation made to political party is fully deductible under Section 80GGC of the Income Tax Act. Similarly, even political parties are exempted from paying any income tax on the funding received.
However, they have to submit their funds declaration yearly to the EC which is again hardly followed.
“There are many ways to convert black money to white and this might be one of them,” J M Lyngdoh, former chief election commissioner, told INN.
Experts say mushrooming of small parties due to tax exemptions they enjoy ‘Many parties evading tax’. “There should be some sort of monitoring on all political parties since they are hardly transparent. They do not maintain proper records of financial details and donors. Since donation below Rs 20,000 need not be shown, they break up huge donations to less than Rs 20,000,” Lyngdoh said.
Some names of parties, who are yet to submit their assets, include “Akhand Bharat National Party”, “Prem Janata Dal” and “All India Liberal Party” and “Indians Front” from Visakhapatnam, among others.
The significant recognized political parties with a sizeable presence in the state are BJP, INC (Indian National Congress), CPI, CPM, TRS and TDP, while the rest come under the category of registered parties.
“Even though show-cause notices are served on these political parties for failing to be transparent, there are many loopholes because of which they get away,” said Anil Bairwal, national coordinator, Association for Democratic Reform (ADR).
“There are lot of political parties which do not even contest and nobody known why they are even formed in the first place. Lot of them, including major ones, have been evading tax from a long time. There is absolutely no accountability from these parties” he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment