New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday launched a web portal to enable political parties to file financial accounts online.
The move is part of the poll panel's "3C strategy" comprising clean up, crackdown and compliance to strengthen transparency and accountability in the political funding and expenditure on which it had been working for a year now under Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, sources said.
"Considering the dismal level of compliance with regulatory financial reporting and certain instances of serious financial impropriety that commission came across in cases of few Registered Unrecognized Political Parties (RUPPs), in May 2022, the Election Commission of India undertook a drive for enforcing compliance adherence in RUPPs", the Election Commission of India said in a press note.
Political parties, which are not intending to file the financial report online will have to convey the reasons for not doing so in writing and the poll panel will update this on the website, said a source. The commission will, in turn, publish all such reports online, along with a letter of justification sent by the party for not filing financial statements online, the EC statement further said.
"Commission has noted with concern certain recent instances of misuse of enabling statutory provisions by certain Registered Unrecognized Political Parties for conducting tax frauds and tax evasions themselves and also becoming instruments and colourable devices for such illegal activities for other persons," said ECI.
The Commission said the step has been taken with twin objectives— to overcome difficulties in filing physical reports, and to ensure timely filing in a standardised format. The portal will facilitate the online filing of contribution reports, audited annual accounts and election expenditure statements by political parties.
These financial statements are required to be submitted by political parties to the Election Commission/Chief Electoral Officers of States/Union Territories as per the Representation of People’s Act, 1951 and transparency guidelines issued by the Commission from time to time over the last many years, the poll panel press note added.
