Congress, BJP saved themselves from prosecution by amending FCRA: Yechury

Having amended the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), the Congress and the BJP had saved themselves from prosecution as both the parties had received huge contributions from foreign companies, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury alleged today.

Yechury and his party have challenged the Centre's decision in the Supreme Court on issuing electoral bonds to cleanup corporate fundings to the political parties.

The apex court has sought the Centre's response on the petition.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud has issued notice on the plea and said it would be tagged along with another pending petition.

"Both the Congress and the BJP have received huge amounts of money from foreign companies. Had these parties not amended the FCRA respectively, they could have been prosecuted. They saved themselves," Yechury told reporters here.

He added that the current BJP-led central government, through the Finance Act 2017, had amended four different statutes -- the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934, the Representation of People Act 1951, the Income Tax Act 1961 and the Companies Act 2013 -- to introduce the concept of electoral bonds.

These bonds were operationalised by the Centre through a notification on January 2.

Alleging that the Congress and the BJP used their stints in power to frame policies that suited the corporates, the CPI(M) leader said corporate fundings to the political parties should be banned.

"Political parties, being recipients of corporate fundings, use their stints in the government to make policies that suit the 'friendly' corporates. These corporates constitute the 'supply side' of corruption, which is corroding our system. Unless corporate funding is banned, this problem cannot be solved," he said.

Yechury contended that the constitutional challenge to the electoral bonds was on the ground that they flew into the face of the "Right to Know" under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, was "arbitrary and thus, violative of Article 14".

He further said that the bonds were introduced by perpetrating a "fraud" on the Constitution by passing the bill as a Money Bill, even though it did not qualify as one under Article 110 of the Constitution.

Yechury also released a list of donors, including some foreign companies, who had contributed huge sums of money to the Congress and the BJP since 2004.