EC threatens action against AAP for discrepancies in funding

NEW DELHI: Flagging discrepancies in its electoral funding statement, the Election Commission Tuesday threatened the AAP with action for “prima facie failing” to follow its transparency guidelines.

In its show-cause notice, the EC claimed that transactions through hawala operators were “wrongly disclosed as voluntary donations”.

Meanwhile, the AAP in a statement said the poll panel notice was based on “poor interpretation of basic accounting practices by the CBDT”.

It said the party's 2014-15 report had details of multiple receipts from same donor which had not been understood properly. “Even the amount of donations in Original Contribution Report is wrongly mentioned in the notice. Election Commission has copy-pasted and referred grossly incorrect and biased observations of Income Tax Department in

AAP said EC’S notice was based on ‘poor interpretation of basic accounting practices by CBDT’

its notice,” the AAP said. The EC has asked the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to respond to the notice “within 20 days”, failing which it will decide on the cases on merit based on the information available with it and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT). Rule 16 A of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order allows the EC to either suspend or withdraw recognition of a recognised political party.

The notice said the AAP had submitted the original contribution report for Financial Year 2014-15, which was received by it on September 30, 2015. The party later submitted a revised report on March 20, 2017. “The original report contains a list of 2,696 donors with the total donations amounting to Rs 37,45,44,618 and the revised contribution report shows the total amount as Rs 37,60,62,631 received from 8,264 donors,” it said.

The poll panel said that a report was received from the office of the CBDT chairman in 2018 regarding “concealment of donations received by the AAP” during Financial Year 2014-15. Referring to concealment of donations, the EC notice said the bank account of the AAP recorded total credits of Rs 67.67 crore, including Rs 64.44 crore from donations in excess of Rs 20,001.

“However, the party has disclosed total income of Rs 54.15 crore from donations in its audited accounts for the year. Therefore, it has been held by the assessing officer that Rs 13.16 crore have not been accounted for by the party and these donations have been held to be from unknown sources,” the notice read.