In a Win for Activists, SC Issues Notice to Centre on Plea Challenging Foreign Political Funding -Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

-TheWire.in

The petition before the apex court had claimed that retrospective amendments to the FCRA were meant to bail out the BJP and Congress, held guilty by the Delhi high court of accepting foreign funding.

 

New Delhi: The Supreme Court’s notice to the Centre on July 2 seeking a response to a plea alleging that the recent amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA), 2010 have opened the doors to unlimited political donations from foreign firms has come as a shot in the arm for activists battling to ensure transparency in political funding.

The activists had also alleged that the FCRA amendment was primarily aimed at protecting the two major national parties – the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, which were held guilty by the Delhi high court in 2014 of taking foreign funding in violation of the FCRA Act.

‘Amendments to FCRA made to overturn the HC judgment against BJP, Congress’

The petition before the apex court was filed by founder-trustee of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) Jagdeep S. Chhokar and former bureaucrat E.A.S. Sarma. They challenged the amendments to the FCRA through the Finance Act, 2016 and the Finance Act, 2018 on the grounds that they had been “made in an attempt to overturn the judgment passed by the Delhi high court (in a PIL filed by petitioners herein) holding the two major political parties (the BJP and the Congress) guilty of taking foreign funding, against which the special leave petitions were dismissed by this court.”

Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocates Prashant Bhushan, Kamini Jaiswal and Pranav Sachdeva contended that “the said amendments have opened doors to unlimited political donations from foreign companies, thereby legitimising financial contributions received from foreign sources.”

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