The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) faces a government probe to see if it has received any foreign donations. It is ironical, because it is facing action thanks to its transparency -- which other parties don't value much, and because it is facing this probe over an amount of Rs 19 crore, while the two big parties with far bigger booties have faced no probes despite allegations and a court case.

Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, facing hit from the AAP ahead of the assembly elections on December 4, had demanded the probe. The Delhi high court last month had ordered it. Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde has announced it. And AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal has welcomed it. (As for BJP, its spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi has said her party had demanded a probe into the funding of AAP which, she alleges, is a Congress front – though it was alleged to be a BJP front before the Delhi elections. Given their unanimity about probing AAP, they seem like each other’s fronts, according to a Kejriwal supporter.)

Under the Representation of People Act as well as the Foreign Contributions (Regulation) Act, political parties are not permitted to accept contributions from foreign sources. However, Kejriwal’s party is in an exceptional situation. First, it is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that has morphed into a political party – possibly the only case of its kind. Moreover, the various NGOs Kejriwal was associated with used to receive funding from agencies like Ford Foundation – like so many other NGOs.

After the success of the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare, Kejriwal’s platform has received donations from well-wishers from India and abroad.

Kejriwal has put up in public domain details of every donation AAP has received – unlike all other parties. The law on this count is that parties need not reveal the source of any donation below Rs 20,000. So, what all parties do is to show a large portion of their total funds as coming from small donations, and thus do not reveal where they got this money from.

Over the past eight years, the six national parties – Congress, BJP, BSP, NCP, CPI and CPI(M) – have received a total of Rs 4,895.96 crore. We know who gave them one-fourth of it, but 75.05 percent of it is from sources only they know of. AAP, calling for transparency, put up details of even smaller donations on its website, and invited this probe.

Kejriwal’s defence is, “Foreigners holding Indian passport have been supporting us. How does it become illegal?” Still, given the law, the matter needs to be probed thoroughly and sources of AAP donations need to be checked.

But what about the other parties? The total amount in question with AAP is smaller than what BJP has received (Rs 19.4 crore) from London-based Anil Agrawal’s Vedanta Group. During the same period – between 2003-04 and 2011-12 – the Vedanta Group also contributed a total of Rs 9.78 crore to the Congress. The firms are Indian, yes, but controlled by a London-based authority.

Thus, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has filed a PIL in Delhi high court seeking a probe into this one particular instance of funding. [Read more here: http://governancenow.com/news/regular-story/vedanta-funding-can-land-congress-bjp-soup]

But that’s a small portion of the three-fourth of all funds to the national parties about which we have no clue. As long as the sources of this much larger pie remain under covers, the probe against Kejriwal’s party would seem like the old guard teaching the new kid on the block how politics is done in India.