EC drops demonetisation shocker on political parties

All political parties rushed to deposit the scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in their bank accounts after the demonetisation on November 8. They are, however, now in trouble as the Election Commission is sending them notices to explain these deposits after a protest by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for being singled out.

Though everything was done legally, the Election Commission is trying to put the political parties on the mat for such deposits violating the transparency guidelines it had issued back in 2014 to all political parties contesting elections.

The guidelines mandate the parties to record the money received in cash in their daily account books and deposit the money so received in the party’s bank accounts with a week of the receipt. Hardly any party followed this directive as most of the cash receipts are used to meet the daily sundry expenses.

The EC notice requires them to produce their account books to ascertain whether the scrapped notes deposited in bank were the money received in the past one week. The whole exercise began with a notice issued by it to the BSP on a complaint that the party had deposited over Rs 100 crore cash into its accounts for many days after the demonetisation.

The BSP reportedly admitted that these deposits were indeed made and asserted that it finds nothing wrong. It questioned why it was singled out for such a probe as other parties were not questioned. The EC sources said the notice was issued to the BSP since a complaint was received against it and not against any other political party. The EC, however, found sufficient merit in the BSP''s charge that it were singled out as a witch-hunt on the complaint by its political rivals and decided to check the post-demonetisation cash deposits of all parties.

The EC sources, however, could not say what action the commission can take for such deposits as the political parties are well within the law.

The EC notice requires them to produce their account books to ascertain whether the scrapped notes deposited in bank were the money received in the past one week.