The Aam Aadmi Party has been under fire recently over mysteriously choosing to remove the list of donors from its website in June this year. The list was never put back despite the website declaring to the contrary.
First a Chanda Bandi agitation was launched by some former AAP supporters, then the Guru of AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, Anna Hazare wrote an emotional letter regarding the same issue. Now the issue has been joined by former AAP leader Yogendra Yadav. He has challenged AAP for a debate over the issue and is claiming that the party is running away from debate.
It was speculated that AAP was receiving more funds from “traditional” sources than public donation and hence it removed the list, but now new details are emerging. The party had received an IT notice, and now this is being seen as one of the reasons why the party removed the donors list.
According to documents accessed by Times Now, there were many donations over 20,000 rupees that were documented on AAP’s website, but the party had not reported those to the Election Commission of India (ECI), which is required as per existing rules.
The Income Tax departments sent summons to the party at least four times this year. Along with the summons, the IT department also attached the list of all the donations which were under IT scanner. But instead of providing the information, AAP removed the details of donations from their website!
AAP has been claiming that these were “inadvertent errors”. The party further boasts that it receives just 8% of its donations in cash thereby hinting that they have nothing to hide.
https://twitter.com/ArvindKejriwal/status/813387116977623040
If these were merely inadvertent errors, why even after almost 7 months now, the errors have not been corrected and the list is not back on the website? Furthermore, former party insider Yogendra Yadav claims that these errors were repeated:
https://twitter.com/_YogendraYadav/status/813415023598977025
If AAP has nothing to hide by taking funds via digital means, why did the party not respond to the IT department even after 4 summons it received? Why did the party fail to notify the ECI about the donations above 20,000 rupees it had claimed to receive on its website? Were all those donations put up on the website bogus, so as to just make people believe about AAP’s transparency while the party was actually receiving funds from other sources? These questions remain unanswered as of now.