Crashing the party

About 3,000 registered unrecognised political parties exist in India. Most of them are sham entities which rarely take part in any democratic exercise, but misuse legal exemptions offered to them and perpetuate huge scams ranging from income tax evasion to money-laundering, running into thousands of crores of rupees

- SONI MISHRA

Stacks of colourful kites and reels of twine crowd out the small one-room commercial establishment located in the quiet middle-class locality of Dattapada Road in Borivali, Mumbai. Except for the board outside, there is nothing to show that this is the registered office of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Party (SVPP).

Sitting on a plastic stool in the centre of the tiny room, the elderly Dashrath Bhai Parekh, who is the national president of the party, is busy making bundles of kites. He says he is in the business of supplying kites, while politics for him is a means of doing social work. He claims he has worked with the likes of Morarji Desai and Sharad Pawar and Mayawati before forming his own party in 2006. Parekh’s party, however, has recently caught the attention of the Election Commission and the income tax authorities for alleged financial irregularities worth crores of rupees. Parekh refutes the allegations and says that his party’s donors include charitable organisations, businesses, the textile industry, diamond merchants and those in the field of real estate, and all funding is aboveboard. He says he has provided the authorities with all relevant documents since the party’s premises were raided by income tax sleuths in September 2022.

In Mumbai again, on Swadeshi Mills Road in Chunabhatti, the only remnant of the Jantawadi Congress Party at the address listed as its national office is a rolled up tricolour lying on the balcony of a modest two-storey building. Anant Sawant, a senior citizen who owns the building, had rented it out to the party. Sawant says he asked party president Santosh M. Katke to vacate the premises after he came to know that the party indulged in wrongful activities.