The Third Eye!!

The transparency guidelines issued by the Election Commission (EC) has a fair intention as according to EC increasing use of black money disturbs the level playing field and vitiates the purity of the election process. The EC's letter dated August 30, 2013, on transparency guidelines said: "The party should ensure that any donation or contribution from a person or company or entity exceeding Rs 20,000 in a financial year is received by crossed A/C payee cheque or draft or by RTGS or NEFT or through Internet transfer."

RTGS stands for real time gross settlement - a funds transfer system that does not involve any waiting period (hence, real time) and the transaction is settled on one to one basis without bundling with any other transfer (hence, gross). Once processed, RTGS payments are irrevocable.

Mukul Roy, All India General Secretary of Trinamool Congress party, is a rarest of the rare personality in Indian politics at present. If compared with any sports personality he is a combination of ‘Captain Cool’ Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Lionel Messi! He managed many tough situations in past with his skills like Messi and his cool head like Dhoni. Even his present situational strategy has kept all political parties including TMC, BJP and the Left combine guessing, “What’s next?”

Mukul Roy skillfully and cool headedly replied the EC vide letter dated October 1, 2013, considerable attention was devoted to the Rs 20,000 cut-off norm, pointing out how difficult, if not impossible, it was to stick to the condition.Roy listed the usual sources of income for the political party. Most stated sources were in keeping with the grassroots brand image of Trinamool.

The letter by Roy said:

"By street/road collection through road shows whose aggregating collection in cash in a day would be much more than Rs 20,000.”

"All recognized local party office having thousands/lakhs of branch office throughout the State/India. Branches collecting funds in cash from various person/entity. Collection from single entity is may be less than much below of Rs 20,000. Total collection would be lakhs of rupees."

"Hence it can be safely assumed that aforesaid and similar to that aforesaid situation will not be considered for receipt through banking channel," Roy said in the letter.

Roy’s letter requested the commission to issue a "clarificatory note".

In November 2014, the commission did issue a clarification, exempting wayside and rally collections from the funds transfer rule. EC’s clarification added: "In case of all donations other than those raised through hundi/bucket collection in a public meeting/rally, the record of name and address of each donor has to be maintained by the political party...."

So far, So good! Many of the collections can be shown in this head. But like every tale is not a fairy tale, Roy submitted the details of the donations in surplus of Rs 20,000 for the financial year 2013-14, on September 25, 2014, only one name figured: Trinetra and its contribution of Rs 1.40 crore!!

Why such hue and cry is aired for such a small figure? Let us have a look into it. It has some legal glitch which we need to understand.

1. Section 293A1(b) of the Companies Act, 1956 states, no company in existence for less than three financial years can make such a donation.According to corporatedir.com, an online directory, Trinetra was registered on April 25, 2011 which means that when the company made the contribution on March 31, 2014, it was 25 days short of the three-year mark.

2. Section 293A2(a) of the Act states: "The amounts which may be so contributed by a company in any financial year shall not exceed 5 per cent of the average net profit... during the three immediately preceding years".For being able to make a donation of Rs 1.40 crore, the company had to make profits of at least Rs 28 crore annually for three previous fiscal years. During the 2012-13 financial year, the company had recorded a loss of Rs 4,121. The performance improved the following year (2013-14) but the net profit was not more than Rs 13,589.The 2011-12 figures are unobtainable but the company would have had to make a net profit of nearly Rs 84 crore - and that too in its year of commencement - to hit the norm to make the donation of Rs 1.40 crore!!

Moreover, Trinetra's bank account shows a debit of Rs 1.4 crore in March last year to an 'election account' in Allahabad Bank. In April 2014 the company paid Rs 4.2 crore to this same 'election account'. There were five payments to the Allahabad Bank account that month alone.

The official address of Trinetra is Room No. 209, second floor, 1 British Indian Street.There is a British India (not Indian) Street in the heart of Calcutta, near the Lalit Great Eastern hotel. At 1 British India Street, which houses several other offices, one of the mailboxes on the ground floor does mention Trinetra under "2nd floor, Room 209". People working in other offices in the building have never seen the Trinetra office to operate!

At least five companies hold more than 5 per cent shares in Trinetra.The directors' report has been signed by Manoj Sharma and Sasi Kant Das. According to corporatedir.com, there are no other active directors/partners in the company except these two officials. Manoj Sharma, the director of Trinetra Consultant Pvt Ltd, and his septuagenarian mother live in a room in a rundown building at a slum in Tiljala (Sreedhar Roy Road in Tiljala — the address listed in the company master data section of the website of the Union corporate affairs ministry) in eastern Calcutta.His mother suggested that Sharma does not earn more than Rs 5,000 a month!!

The address of the other director appeared to be fictitious.The address of the second director, Sasi Kant Das, is also listed on the corporate affairs ministry’s website: 49/5/3F, Karl Marx Sarani, South Port, Calcutta.A building does stand at 49/5 — again in the middle of a slum but this time near the Fancy Market in Kidderpore, southwest Calcutta. The ground floor alone has 80 shops but premises 3F does not exist. Inquiries with 32 shopkeepers on the ground floor threw up replies that they had never heard about Das.

A delegation of the state BJP, led by AshimSarkar, lodged a formal complaint with the state chief electoral officer.The Election Commission of India has taken cognizance of the Rs 1.40-crore donation made by Trinetra Consultant to the Trinamool Congress and ordered a probe by the Directorate-General of Income Tax Investigation and the Registrar of Companies.

Investigators tracking the money trail of the firm that transferred crores to Trinamool before the 2014 LokSabha election found few interesting facts. Jagatjanni Consultant — a company run by one of Trinetra's directors — started buying paintings. In its balance sheet for 2012, Jagatjanni showed four paintings bought for Rs 4 crore as an "investment".The next year's balance sheet showed that the company has only two paintings. Where were the two others? There was no mention of the missing paintings in the profit and loss statement, either.Interestingly, however, these two paintings were neither sold nor got depreciated. They simply vanished from the following year's balance sheet. 

The missing paintings — worth Rs 2 crore — weren't even mentioned in the balance sheet of the company that posted a loss that year. Can we connect it to something? Painting! Sudipto Sen! Only time will tell.

According to Hindu mythology, when Lord Shiva opened his third eye; it turned the object he looked at into ashes. But Trinetra didn’t leave any ashes, it simply made disappear!!

Reference

- The Telegraph, 17th, 18th and 19th January 2015

- The Times of India, 24th Jan 2015, 8th Mar 2015