Is state funding for polls the answer?

With voting day approaching, the election scene in Delhi is getting murky. It is hard to recall another poll for the state Assembly marked by such acrimony. The Aam Aadmi Party has just been accused of accepting donations from business entities engaged in money-laundering. The charge was made recently by a breakaway group of the party but the BJP, seen as AAP’s main rival, pounced upon the opening created with such alacrity as to leave the impression that it was just waiting for the bombshell to be dropped.

A strictly local matter, ordinarily the BJP’s local unit was expected to roll up its sleeve and make the appropriate noises. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitched in on this. Finance minister Arun Jaitley weighed in. BJP spokespersons held forth on this single issue for much of the day on television on Tuesday. It  looked like it was way more than an election in a mere Union Territory.

All such allegations should be investigated by the designated authorities under appropriate sections of the law even if no one makes a noise. But the plain truth is that all our political parties gather small sums of money typically less than Rs 20,000 which can legitimately be collected in the form of cash as donations from countless people in order to stay under the radar, or large sums are shown as small sums from multiple sources.

This is black money, not to put too fine a point on it. Perhaps the way out is state funding of elections as has been proposed by the Election Commission. That will make our polls cleaner and make the elected representatives less susceptible to pressure from fat cats who offer election finances and then squeeze legislators and ministers for favours as quid pro quo.

This Delhi election has got especially shrill and negative as the race is thought to be very close between AAP and BJP, if opinion polls are to be believed. Since the Congress is believed to be on the margins, it is not coming under direct repetitive fire. In a recent article, the RSS mouthpiece Organiser noted that Kiran Bedi had to be parachuted in as the BJP’s chief minister candidate as the party’s organisation was not in fighting trim before the election.

This is what BJP’s critics have been saying all along, and now its progenitor is confirming the view. However, Ms Bedi’s entry has widened intra-party fissures, making things look difficult for the saffron party as its worker base is thought to have gone listless. If the BJP haemorrhages votes, the advantage could be shared by the AAP and the Congress. Many would wonder why the RSS’ public analysis became necessary.