Kejriwal spent no time to welcome the decision following Union Home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde’s announcement of the move. In fact, the AAP leader urged the government to issue a statement within 48 hours, while making demands for similar probe into funds for other political parties.
“Finish the probe in 48 hours. But let them also probe how Congress got funds worth Rs. 2,000 crore. Let them also investigate the BJP’s funding.” Kejriwal snapped.
The Home ministry move comes a day after Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit questioned the source of AAP’s funding, whose main election plank is to check corruption.
Delhi will go to Assembly polls on December 4 for which AAP is fast emerging as the main contender drawing massive support from electors.
“We have ordered an inquiry into funding of AAP to verify if any foreign donations were routed to it,” said Shinde here a day after Delhi chief minister Shiela Dikshit questioned the source of nearly Rs 19 crore collected by AAP.
To this Kejriwal said: “In fact, the government can issue a report on this within 48 hours if it likes. However, we also demand that funds of Congress and BJP are also inspected. As far as foreign funding is concerned, foreigners holding Indian passport have been supporting us. How does this become illegal?”
Meanwhile, BJP emphasized that it had been raising questions about AAP’s funding, and that home ministry has reacted rather late in the day.
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The Delhi High Court had on October 24 asked the government to find out whether AAP had received donations from foreign sources in violation of the FCRA. It asked the Centre to report by December 10 about the accounts of AAP.
BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said that Shinde’s announcement was an acknowledgment that government had failed in its duty to keep AAP from receiving funds from illegal foreign sources, and validates BJP’s charge that the fledgling outfit was a front of Congress.
AAP supporters pointed out that in the last 65 years the Congress has never questioned the BJP’s source of funding, nor has the BJP questioned the Congress’s source of funding. “It only shows they are acting in tandem against us,” said a supporter.
Shinde being non-committal about a timeframe for the inquiry raised eyebrows. The probe will focus on whether the AAP breached the Representation of People’s Act (RPA) by accepting funds from sources that are forbidden under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). “Such matters take time…one has to see from which foreign country the donations may be coming,” Shinde said.
The ban provided for under the FCRA is meant “to ensure that the foreign contribution and foreign hospitality is not utilised to affect or influence electoral politics, public servants, judges and other people working in the important areas of national life.”
According to the AAP, it has collected Rs 19 crore as donations from around 63,000 individuals belonging to diverse sections of society. The party claims to have received donations ranging from Rs 10 to several lakhs, from rickshaw-pullers, traders, industrialists and NRIs.
“Our aim was to collect Rs 20 crore for the Delhi assembly elections, and we would soon be achieving that target. Till the last week of September, we had collected around Rs 10 crore but within a span of a month, we have received Rs 9 crore as donations,” said an AAP spokesperson.
AAP has also questioned the motives of the advocate M L Sharma who had moved the high court seeking a probe into the sources of its funding. It said that the petition was “mala fide”, and backed up the charge by saying that Sharma has not made AAP but Kejriwal and his colleagues Manish Sisodia, Prashant Bhushan and Shanti Bhushan respondents.
“Though the petition makes all types of ridiculous allegations against Team Anna and an NGO Kabir with which Manish Sisodia was associated, it does not disclose the result of an earlier petition filed by Sharma against foreign funding of Kabir. The government after full investigation had found everything to be in order,” claimed AAP.
The AAP also drew attention to a similar petition filed by Association for Democratic Reforms questioning the funding of Congress and BJP by foreign firms like Vedanta. “The government has been dragging its feet in that case and has taken no action despite documentary evidence of substantial funding of the Congress and the BJP by foreign companies,” alleged the AAP
