A huge number of donations to political parties came from unknown sources over the last four years — a practice the Election Commission has been trying to discourage. More than 3,000 donations in this period came without donors’ details like Permanent Account Number (PAN) or addresses, said the Delhi-based think tank, Association of Democratic Rights or ADR, in a report. Political parties are required to submit details of donors who […]

Behind the smoke of paltry figures, seemingly intended to hide the big-ticket donors’ details, political parties in India have unwittingly revealed a lot. About 90 per cent of the donations received by these parties across the political spectrum are from sources whose identities are not in the public domain. (Be open: Should India’s President Mukherjee insist on more openness with the country’s ruling bodies?) The news puts all those donations […]