It is a matter of deepest regret that both the Congress and the BJP which have ruled India from 1947 to 2018 fully and firmly support the unrestricted, unaccounted and undisclosed political donations to political parties from foreign countries. What does this imply? Do they want to always dance at the whims and fancies of some foreign power and say nothing as they get huge political funding from them? What else can justify foreign funding of political parties? With what face do they demand highest transparency from public when they themselves don't show even a modicum of it?

This is nothing but the single biggest proof of political treacherythat politicians do with our great nation! They are just concerned about preserving their own vested political interests! This alone explains why unfettered license is given time and again by political parties ruling India to rogue countries like Pakistan and dreaded terror groups to indulge in merciless killings of our brave soldiers, armless people, hapless children and women among others and then justifying it shamelessly in the name of "Ramzan ka Ceasefire"! Such unprovoked killings can never be justified nor permitted to happen under any circumstances but politicians ensure this by ordering soldiers not to open fire and exercise maximum restraint by even braving their slaps and their helmets being thrown in the gutters and then doing lip service by hailing an open insult of our soldiers as "commendable restraint"!

Which self-respecting nation will ever indulge in such act of worst treachery with their own people and brave soldiers? India! Which self-respecting nation will give unfettered license to rogue countries like Pakistan, traitors like stone pelters to freely attack our soldiers whenever they want without facing an retaliationand dreaded terror groups like Lashkar, Jaish, Hizbul among others to first abduct our brave soldiers like Aurangzeb and then torture them mercilessly and then kill them and still order soldiers not to retaliate as "Ramzan ka Ceasefire" is still in operation? India! Which self-respecting nation will permit stone pelters and traitors to wave Pakistani flags, flags of dreaded terror groups like ISIS and slap our soldiers who have to tolerate all this quietly and yet justify this in the name of "winning the heart and soul of Kashmiris"? India!

Are we really a self-respecting nation? Certainly not! This alone explains why politicians allowed Pakistan which Justice Markandey termed as "fake country" to come into existence on map and then allowed them to even retain a large part of J&K which they had illegally occupied in 1948 and then like fools rushed to UN instead of fighting and taking back the whole of J&K! Not stopping here, even when we won the 1971 war superbly and Indian Army captured 93,000 Pakistani prisoners of war, our politicians ensured all of them were fed well and released honourably even though Pakistan didn't release more than 100 of our soldiers and tortured them mercilessly as was testified even by former Pakistan PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto while he was in jail and he could not sleep in jail as the Indian soldiers next to his room barrack were mercilessly beaten and tortured and ensured that another fake country as Justice Markandey Katju calls Bangladesh was born as an independent nation!

Even now things don't end here only! They now want political settlement of J&K with traitors, separatists Hurriyat group who always keep toeing Pakistani line and even spend taxpayers money of Rs 560 crore on them every year for their various expenses! Hurriyat wants one more partition of India! Yet some leaders of Congress and BJP shamelessly keep giving them undue relevance to them for reasons known best to them!

India has lost more soldiers in cross border terrorism termed as "proxy war" waged by Pakistan and yet politicians repeatedly want "Ramzan ka Ceasefire" with them and terrorist groups who use these opportunity to shell our border areas due to which more than lakh people are forced to migrate and many are killed similarly they attack our soldiers who are killed as they are ordered not to undertake any counter operations by these very politicians! This happened in Vajpayee's era and now again! Our soldiers are repeatedly betrayed by politicians of Congress and BJP by repeatedly trusting them, allowing them to kill our soldiers and yet get away! Not just this, India granted Most Favoured Nation status to Pakistan unilaterally in 1996 which is continuing till now unabashedly and BJP and Congress both are equal conduits in ensuring that this is never revoked till now even though Pakistan has ensured that more than a lakh soldiers and many people are repeatedly killed by their forces and terrorists trained by Pakistani Army and ISI!

Not just this, officers of notorious ISI are again unilaterally invited to inspect the place in Pathankot where ISI itself sent terrorists to mercilessly kill our soldiers even though NIA is refused permission to go to Pakistan! To top it all, Pakistan is allowed to gain hugely from the unequal Indus Water Treaty made with it in 1960 till now!

As if this is not enough, Pakistani invader and mastermind of Kargil war Gen Pervez Musharraf is given a grand red carpet welcome to India just 2 to 3 months after Kargil war in which we lost more than 600 brave soldiers as per official figures and Captain Saurav Kalia along with 5 soldiers of 4 Jat Regiment were mercilessly tortured for 22 days, beaten, blinded by piercing their eyes with hot iron rods, maiming their body parts not sparing even their private parts and then finally shot in the head before handing their dead bodies to India yet all this was overlooked and Musharraf who spent one night about 15 to 16 km inside Indianterritory to boost the morale of terrorists and Pakistani soldiers to mercilessly kill our soldiers and who even threatened to nuke India if our soldiers dared to cross the border line was given a royal grand welcome most shamelessly by our politicians attended by leaders from all big parties! This same Musharraf hails dreaded terror leaders Osama bin Laden and Hafiz as "Osama to hero hain ji hero! Hafiz Saeed bhi hero hain ji hero! Those who fight in J&K are freedom fighters and not terrorists"!Should we be proud of this?

Simply put, Gen Pervez Musharraf is facing charges of murder in his own country of former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto, Maulana Akbar Bukti of Baluchistan, Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi among others yet India honoured him and even big media houses too honoured him as if he as a very good man! He made aborted attempt in 1988 to capture Siachen as Brigadier and then again in 1999 another aborted attempt to capture Kargil yet our politicians and some big media houses keep courting him for reasons known best to them!

Who can deny Pakistan's role in sending trained terrorists to India to repeatedly attack Mumbai as we saw in 26/11 in 2008 which killed about 200 people, 1993 bomb blast in Mumbai which again killed about 300 people and also injured about more than 700, blowing off train in Mumbai which left more than 300 dead, attack on Parliament in 2001 which left many security persons guarding it dead etc? Who can deny Pakistan's role in fomenting terrorism in Punjab in 1980s and 1990s? Who can deny Pakistan's role in sending terrorists to attack Akshardham temple in Gujarat, Red Fort in Delhi etc?

Who can deny Pakistan's direct role in fomenting trouble in all parts of India and arming Naxalites and other terror groups? Still why is Pakistan not declared by India as a rogue and terror sponsor country rather is allowed to continue with the tag of "Most Favoured Nation" most unabashedly?

Coming back to the main point, the Supreme Court on July 2 issued notices to the Central Government on a petition challenging retrospective amendments made to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 1976. The PIL claims amendments were intended to protect suspect political donations by certain NRI-led companies to the Congress and BJP. The plea, filed by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), was argued by senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan and was filed by lawyer Neha Rathi! A Bench of Apex Court led by CJI Dipak Misra issued the notices!

It would be pertinent to mention here that the government will now have to file a formal reply defending the amendments. The amendments were made after a Delhi High Court judgment delivered on March 28, 2014 which had declared as illegal donations made by some NRI-led companies such as Vedanta to the BJP and Congress! Delhi High Court had raised serious questions over the hush-hush manner in which political parties accept funds from foreign countries!

Truth be told, under the law, as it stood then, political parties were disallowed from taking donations from foreign entities. Once the Delhi High Court ruled against them and asked the Election Commission and the government to act against them within six months, the Central Government brought in the retrospective amendments in March 2018 making these donations post-facto legal. The Finance Acts 2016 and 2018 had made certain amendments to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, 2010, changing the 1976 law with effect from April 1, 2018.

As it turned out, the ADR petition argued that the amendments were an attempt to overturn the judgment passed by the Delhi High Court holding the BJP and Congress guilty of receiving foreign funding. It said that these amendments have opened doors to unlimited political donations from foreign companies thereby legitimizing financial contributions from foreign sources. The retrospective amendments changed the definition of what constitutes a foreign company in such a way that key beneficiaries would not face legal scrutiny for donations with effect from September 26, 2010. Initially the BJP and Congress had challenged the Delhi High Court judgment in the Apex Court but later withdrew it abruptly! Instead, the government then decided to take legislative steps to circumvent the Delhi High Court ruling and legitimise the funding received from abroad!
Speaking for myself, all foreign funding to all political parties in any manner should stop forthwith! We know too well how shamelessly these parties and politicians kowtow in front of terrorists and rogue nations like Pakistan by repeatedly declaring "Ramzan ka ceasefire" so that our people, children and soldiers are mercilessly slaughtered by them, allowing traitors to attack our soldiers and yet not allowing FIRs to be filed against them rather allowing the withdrawal of FIR against more than 10,000 stone pelters as we saw recently in J&K and worst of all ordering FIR to be filed against soldiers which compels the families of soldiers to fight the case in Supreme Court as we saw in case of Major Aditya Kumar whose father Lt Colonel Karamveer Singh said his son had been "wrongly and arbitrarily" named in FIR! But can every father of every soldier afford to fight similarly? Certainly not!

To be sure, eminent and senior lawyer of Apex Court Prashant Bhushan very rightly demanded that these amendments should be repealed as it has only served to open the door for unlimited, unaccounted and unrestricted flow of money from foreign countries to political parties! Bhushan also rightly pointed out that many fake companies will open in India because of this amendment! There can be no denying it!

On a concluding note, I am sure that Supreme Court will certainly set the matter right onthis because this is connected with the very independence of our great nation which can be put in peril by greedy and vested politicians just for getting funding from foreign countries to win elections! Can this be ever allowed? This under no circumstances can ever be allowed to happen anyhow in India!

Sanjeev Sirohi, Advocate,
s/o Col BPS Sirohi,
A 82, Defence Enclave,
Sardhana Road, Kankerkhera,
Meerut – 250001, Uttar Pradesh.