NEW DELHI, Feb 8: Leading trade and industry associations say a flat ``no'' to funding political parties and taking any initiative in creating poll funds on the lines of those created by industrial houses Tatas and Birlas.Though the trade and industry bodies favour evolving a transparent and efficient mechanism to fund various parties, they are are not inclined to initiating such a measure on their own.``A chamber like Ficci represents more than 500 associations apart from a host of individual industries throughout the country. As each of them can have a different view in supporting a party based on their ideology or promises, it is difficult to take a position'', a top Ficci official said in a interview.
Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) deputy director general Manushi Roy said the body has no proposal to set up an election fund on its own as it is not ``our mandate''.
The setting up of separate electoral trusts by the house of Tatas and the Rs 15,000 crore Aditya Birla group recently has sparkeda debate in industry circles on why others cannot attempt a similar move.
Assocham secretary T.G. Keswani said the chamber's constitution did not allow contributions to political parties. ``Chambers are apolitical in nature and they are not supposed to contribute to election funds''.
Asked whether CII would set a model by creating an election fund, Roy said the chamber had highlighted the importance of transparency by asking all its members to pay only through cheques to be reflected in the balance sheets of the companies.
While the Tatas have decided to distribute funds based on the past performance of the parties taking into account the number of seats held by them in the Lok Sabha, Birlas have made it clear that the disbursal would be influenced by the geographical location of their units across the country.
Except CII, all the other chambers questioned the wisdom of companies openly giving donations to meet the campaign expenses of political parties and said ``this might boomerang on the businessinterests of the particular firm later on.''
PHD chamber of commerce and industry president O P Vaish said it may not be practical for companies to extend financial support in a transparent way as it may prove detrimental to their business if a different party was voted to power.Assocham president L Lakshman said unlike the US, the Indian political system is still not mature enough for industries to declare their preferences based on the agenda declared in the manifestos of parties.
``I would say a strict no for making political choice on behalf of shareholders. What criteria would you adopt,'' he asked adding until now none of the parties were serious in their poll documents regarding economic priorities.
Ficci said ``there is a vacuum in the mechanism of selecting a particular party by companies''. The chamber also casts doubt over the mechanism proposed by Tata trust based on past performance categorising it as a ``fixed coefficient model''.
For instance, many of the parties that make a differenceat the regional and national level had no adequate representation or were absolutely non-existent earlier, he said and cited the case of a dominant party like BJP whose Lok Sabha representation was in single digit barely a decade back.Sen favoured state-funding of elections but agreed that it will be a complicated process in a multi-party democracy like India.
``We haven't given much thought to the exact modality that could be followed,'' he said.
Ficci said even in the US the state-funding is limited to presidential candidates of the two parties while the senators and congressmen are made to fend for themselves.Sen said some mechanism had to be established to make the process work adding there were a lot of ways by which poll expenses could be brought down. Experts have estimated that administrative expenses of the government apart, the total figure might range between Rs 2000 to Rs 2500 crore after taking into account the limit of Rs 15 lakh per candidate set by Election Commission.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
