Need mechanism to check unaccounted donations, respect donor privacy: CEC Rajiv Kumar

New Delhi: Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Saturday stressed the need for a mechanism to check 'unaccounted' donations while also ensuring donors' privacy is protected and they are not harassed.

Responding to a question on electoral bonds during the press conference to announce the schedule for Lok Sabha elections, Kumar said, 'As far as electoral bonds are concerned, the Commission has always been in favour of transparency'.

"In democracy, there is no scope for hiding things, it is all about making everybody know, we are all for transparency. This is the first part of the exercise that it must be known, the country now has to ask and find solutions through an institutional mechanism where the donor's privacy is also considered," he said.

In its landmark verdict on February 15, the top court had scrapped the Centre's electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it 'unconstitutional' and ordered disclosure by the EC of donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients.

Kumar said, 'The unaccounted money which is used in the elections... during the elections we are very particular to control it but how do we also control the donations in the unaccounted form is something which the entire nation needs to work together... the donor's privacy is also protected so he is not harassed, how the money is channelised and how it is more and more white."

The CEC expressed confidence that a 'better' system will evolve.

"In the digital age... it should be very very low cash economy... therefore one has to think of it and I am sure a better system will evolve," Kumar added.

The CEC said that the Election Commission has made it compulsory for all political parties to inform it about the contributions they are receiving. The parties are also supposed to declare how much they have collected and how much they have spent in the annual accounts.

"Also after every election they are supposed to give us an account of what they have spent during the particular action...we also publish this on the website of the Commission for everyone to know what is happening," he said.

Following the Supreme Court directive, the State Bank of India (SBI), which was the authorised seller of electoral bonds, shared the data with the poll panel on March 12.

The top court had given the Election Commission time till 5 pm on March 15 to upload the data on its website.

The SBI said a total of 22,217 electoral bonds of varying denominations were purchased by donors between April 1, 2019, and February 15 this year, out of which 22,030 were redeemed by political parties.

The Supreme Court, however, pulled up the SBI on Friday over non-disclosure of the numbers unique to each electoral bond that would help in matching donors with the recipient political party, saying it was 'duty bound' to reveal them.

The top court also issued a notice to the country's largest bank to explain the reasons for not revealing the unique alphanumeric numbers in compliance with its directions even as a political row erupted over the electoral bonds scheme.

The CEC did not respond to a question about non-disclosure of the unique numbers.