Aam Aadmi Party to Face Funding Investigation

It is an open secret in India that politicians and political parties fund their activities through billions of dollars of tainted black money. Party funding is opaque and they have also banded together to stop the use of Right to Information (RTI) applicability on their funding. BJP and Congress have now banded together to raise the funding origin of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in India. This small party which was started a year ago by anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal has enjoyed a great bit of success. The company has seen its popularity surge in opinion polls as the masses are tired of the voting for the same set of corrupt and sleazy politicians. The party has made its funding transparent and available on its website. In comparison nobody knows the source of how the big parties in India are funded. Everyone knows that businessmen support the parties through their unaccounted black money but nobody does anything. The Election Commission has set a limit of Rs. 40 lakh of spending per candidate for a constituency, but everybody vastly exceeds this limit through compromised accountants and proxies. The EC cannot do much and generally raps a person found of breaching its rules.

The Congress government at the center has generally used the investigating agencies as its pet dogs to hound the opposition. In fact the Supreme Court has called the CBI a caged parrot amongst other names given to India’s top investigating agencies. But the home minister finds that it is important to investigate the funding origins of AAP. This is the same minister who was found holidaying in the USA during major disasters in India. I am 100% sure that he would find enough black money and tainted wealth if he would investigate the funding of any mainstream political party. AAP has rattled the cages of the leech like political class in India with expectations the party could win as much as 1/3rd of the seats in capital Delhi. This would be a spectacular performance for a party that was set up just one year ago, without any mass base or huge money backing it. This party is mainly backed by Indian middle class professionals who want to see the rise of honest and dedicated leadership. There is still a lot of doubt whether the party can succeed in overcoming the sleaziness and corruption in the system. Visiting radial religious leaders for vote bank, politics is not exactly a good move. Also Arvind Kejriwal will have to ensure that lumpen elements from other parties do not join the AAP making it a carbon copy of the other political parties.

TOI

We have ordered an inquiry into funding of AAP to verify if any foreign donations were routed to it,” Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde told newspersons here a day after Delhi chief minister Shiela Dikshit questioned the source of nearly Rs 19 crore collected by AAP. Shinde didn’t fix a timeframe for the probe. Kejriwal welcomed the probe. He said, “In fact, the government can issue a report on this within 48 hours if it likes. However, we also demand that funds of Congress and BJP are also inspected. As far as foreign funding is concerned, foreigners holding Indian passport have been supporting us. How does this become illegal?”

BJP, which feels equally threatened by AAP’s challenge, did not find anything amiss about Centre’s sudden move. In fact, the party emphasized that it had been raising questions about AAP’s funding, and that home ministry has reacted rather late in the day.