West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had, during the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls and after the election results were announced, repeatedly attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on spending huge amount of money on election campaigning.
Today, interestingly, Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking an all-party meeting with the “single agenda of public funding of elections in India” with the objective of rooting out what has been called the ‘Mother of all corruption’. Banerjee wrote that “the time has come for the government funding of elections which is the norm today in 65 countries in the world”.
Banerjee has in the recent past, alleged that the BJP had been distributing money to voters through hawala, which was being transported under Z plus security. She had also said that a BJP candidate was caught carrying “crores of rupees”
In her letter to the PM today, Banerjee mentioned that “You are perhaps well aware that political parties spend lavishly on publicity and logistics and are said to have even distributed cash for votes. The Election Commission of India (ECI) had imposed strict limits only on the expenditure incurred by candidates on their election campaign and not on the political parties.”
The letter is being seen as a clever move by Banerjee where she addresses the corruption issue of the BJP during elections directly with the Prime Minister without mentioning the political party. While on the one hand, she has been fighting to bring back ballot papers replacing electronic voting machines (EVMs), she is also seen as fighting on other electoral reforms that give a natural advantage to the party in power.
Banerjee in her letter also quoted figures and added that “India has gained notoriety of having spent the largest amount of funds in elections in 2019 in the world”. She said it was a “burning issue of national importance” that the Trinamool Congress had flagged in its manifesto in 2014 and 2019.
“The recently published report ‘Poll Expenditure: The 2019 Elections of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS)’ has confirmed that the 2019 General Elections to the Lok Sabha was the ‘most expensive election ever, anywhere’ and twice as expensive as the Parliamentary Election held in 2014.”
The Bengal CM added that it had reached a minimum of Rs 60,000 crore with the maximum unknown and could be much higher. It is apprehended that the expenditure in 2024 could go beyond Rs 1 lakh crore, she said.
“It is shocking to learn from Dr N Bhaskara Rao, chairperson, Centre for Media Studies that ‘Mother of all corruption lies in the spiralling election expenditure. If we are not able to address this, we can’t check corruption,” she added.
She said that a study by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance on ‘Funding of Political Parties and Election Campaigns’ found that 65 countries in the world received Direct Public Funding and 79 countries in the world received Indirect Public Funding.
She cited examples of countries such as Germany, France, UK that rely on Direct Public Funding and 71 countries that are entitled to free media access for political parties. “In our country, free broadcasting and television time is allowed only in the State-owned All India Radio and Doordarshan,” she wrote.
