Details of donations received by electoral trusts and their further distribution to political parties are neither personal information nor held by the Income-Tax Department in fiduciary capacity, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has said in an order aimed at ensuring transparency in electoral funding.
The Commission has directed the Income-Tax Department to make public the list of electoral trusts formed during 10 years since 2003-04 and whether they received Income-Tax exemptions.
A Division Bench of the Commission also directed the department to take views of these trusts on furnishing the details of contributions received by them which have been distributed to political parties.
The Bench said the CIC directive to disclose Income-Tax returns of the political parties became final as that was neither challenged nor reversed.
This means the details of contributions to political parties from electoral trusts are supposed to be disclosed.
Similarly, the financial resources of electoral trusts cannot be classified under any category of secrecy or be exempted under any clause of Section 8 of the RTI Act, the Bench held.
Hence, it said, the details of contributions received by the electoral trusts and distributed to political parties neither given in fiduciary capacity nor can be considered personal information. — PTI
