FM Arun Jaitley invites suggestions to make political funding cleaner

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today threw an "open invitation" to the opposition in the Lok Sabha to suggest steps to make electoral funding cleaner and more transparent.

"I have an open invitation to all, please suggest to me a better system which will ensure clean money and transparency to the extent possible," he said. Jaitley said although the opposition was opposing the provisions of the Finance bill related with electoral bonds, but they have not come out with a "single suggestion" to deal with the issue.

"I am only hearing adjectives like it must be clean, it must be transparent. Please give me ideal combination of the two. We are willing to consider it. I will wait for a specific suggestion," he said while replying to a debate on amendments proposed by the Rajya Sabha to the Finance Bill 2017.

These were later rejected by the Lower House. The Opposition accused the Government of running roughshod by opening doors for "political extortionism" and passing "draconian" provisions in the Finance Bill.

Among the amendments approved by the Rajya Sabha and rejected by the Lok Sabha today was a provision to for a company to disclose the name of the political parties to which it has made contributions.