Clean Money, Trusted Public Life

The plan

1. One automatic asset register. Every government employee at every level (central, state and local, permanent or on contract, including public company staff and board members), every minister, MP and MLA, and every person or firm registered with the government in a contractual role (contractors, suppliers, consultants, contract workers, and for a firm its owners, directors and every ultimate beneficial owner: any person who ultimately owns or controls 10% or more, as in the significant beneficial owner rules under the Companies Act, traced through every holding company, trust and foreign layer) is covered. Registration as a government vendor includes consent to the yearly statement. They file nothing. The system compiles each person's net-worth statement every year, for self, spouse and dependants, linked by Aadhaar. It pulls from land records (Chapter 5), bank, demat, insurance, provident fund, Vahan, hallmark gold, MCA and the bank-transaction tax ledger (Chapter 1).
   • The person gets 15 days to correct errors and add the few things no registry holds: unhallmarked gold and jewellery, art, foreign assets and private loans. Silence confirms the statement.
   • Any asset found later outside the statement counts as unexplained wealth.
   • Detailed data is visible only to the Lokpal (or the state Lokayukta) and the courts, with every access logged and shown to the person. A public summary (total by asset class and the change from last year, without account numbers, addresses or children's details) is published for every person covered, searchable by name and department or by vendor.
   • A firm is paid on a government contract only while the statements of its owners, directors and ultimate beneficial owners are complete. The names of every contracting firm's ultimate beneficial owners are public on the vendor register, as on the UK's public register of people with significant control. A false or hidden owner bars the firm and the person from government contracts for 10 years, and any payment made while the owner was hidden is recovered.
2. Explain or forfeit. Lawful income is everything on record: salary, all income in the Chapter 1 bank-transaction ledger, archived income-tax returns for the 10 years before that ledger, and inheritance and gifts on record. A spouse's or dependant's business income counts too. If wealth exceeds lawful income by more than 25% and more than ₹25 lakh, the system issues a notice approved by a Lokpal or Lokayukta bench.
   • The person has 30 days to explain.
   • If the wealth stays unexplained, a special court orders civil forfeiture within 180 days.
   • In parallel, a criminal case runs under Section 13(1)(b) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, where the accused already has to account for assets beyond known income.
   • Relatives or associates whose own assets exceed their lawful income get the same notice, and the Benami Act covers front owners.
3. Amnesty first. The 30-day declaration window in Chapter 1 runs first. The explain-or-forfeit test applies only after it closes.
4. Open election funding. Parties may receive money only through digital, KYC-verified "open bonds".
   • Donor, amount and party go up on the Election Commission (ECI) portal within 48 hours.
   • The cap is ₹1 crore per donor group per year, counted at the level of the ultimate owner using MCA beneficial-owner data.
   • A company may give only once it is at least 3 years old, and no more than 7.5% of their average 3-year net profit (Section 182 of the Companies Act).
   • No cash at all. Barred donors: government contractors (over ₹10 crore of contracts in the last 3 years, or during a contract) and foreign-controlled firms.
   • Any other money a party receives after the law starts is frozen in escrow within 48 hours and confiscated by ECI order after a hearing. Appeal lies to the High Court within 30 days and is decided within 60 days. The party also loses its reserved symbol and free broadcast time for that year.
   • All campaign spending is digital and logged on the ECI expense app. Proven unreported spending disqualifies the candidate through an election petition decided within 6 months.
5. Faceless audits and inquiries. An algorithm assigns every vigilance inquiry, departmental audit and inspection to a random officer in another state. All contact runs through a recorded portal, the model the income-tax department used when it randomly allotted 58,319 cases in its first faceless phase. Where a site visit is needed, a random team from another district does it with body cameras and geo-tagged photos, and the remote officer decides. This covers central bodies from day 1, and state bodies once the state adopts it or through the Chapter 28 route.
6. One owner. A Chief Integrity Officer, a mission head of cabinet-minister rank reporting to the Prime Minister (Chapter 12), owns every date in this chapter.

Cost and return

Build cost (estimate):

• Who builds: a not-for-profit company on the GSTN model runs the core register. Analytics and filing tools are open: any firm that passes the published certification test can build on the register's API, and is de-certified within 7 days of a failed audit. ECI owns the funding portal; the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) owns faceless allocation.
• Savings (estimate): government buying is taken at about ₹30 lakh crore a year (a conservative estimate, under a tenth of GDP). If corruption adds 5% and this plan removes one-fifth of that: ₹30 lakh crore × 5% × 20% = about ₹30,000 crore a year, about 45 times the build cost.
• Forfeitures: credited to a separate Consolidated Fund account, published monthly.
• Courts: 100 special-court benches. In year 1, if 50,000 top-risk filers are examined, 20% get notices and half fail to explain, that is 5,000 cases, or 50 per bench (estimate).
• Jobs: about 2,000 forensic accountants and data analysts.

Timeline

First 30 days:

• The register goes live and compiles draft statements for every central minister, MP and Group A officer, with the 15-day correction window. This uses existing powers: the conduct rules and Section 44 of the Lokpal Act.
• Parliament passes the Election Funding Act, amending Sections 29B and 29C of the Representation of the People Act and Section 182 of the Companies Act. ECI opens the open-bond portal and 48-hour disclosure starts for all new donations.
• The CVC moves all new central vigilance inquiries to random inter-state allocation.
• The Chief Integrity Officer is appointed.

Within 1 year:

• Parliament passes the Illicit Enrichment and Forfeiture Act (civil forfeiture, the 25% and ₹25 lakh trigger, 180-day decisions).
• 100 special-court benches are designated with a 180-day disposal rule.
• The first full annual match of every government employee and registered contractor is complete, and notices go out in risk order.
• Faceless allocation extends to building permits, GST audits and factory inspections.

Guardrails

• Court only: forfeiture happens only by court order. Free legal aid is provided. An appeal to the High Court within 90 days is decided within 90 days.
• Threshold: a notice issues only above 25% and ₹25 lakh. Smaller gaps get an automatic "correct your data" request, not a case.
• Fair selection: cases are picked by risk score plus a 10% purely random sample. Notice counts by state and party are published every month.
• Privacy: misuse or leaking of detailed data is a criminal offence; the public summary never shows account numbers, addresses or children's details; a person can see every access to their file.
• After office: statements continue for 5 years after leaving office, and wealth gained in office stays open to the test for 10 years after exit.
• Retaliation: an official who acts against a donor because of a donation is suspended automatically and prosecuted.
• Escrow limits: escrow holds only the disputed money, never a party's other funds. An appeal filed within 60 days of a poll is heard within 15 days.
• Faceless rotation: no officer gets a repeat case from the same district within 24 months. Every step is time-stamped and reviewable.
• Language: every document is machine-translated into English and Hindi within 24 hours with the original attached. A disputed translation is checked by a certified translator within 7 days, and the decision cites the original.

Sources: UK Companies House: people with significant control · Transparency International: first round of e-declarations in Ukraine · NewsBytes: CPI 2025, India 91st of 182 · ThePrint: 7,229 CBI cases pending, 409 over 20 years · The420: CBI conviction rate 71.71% in 2025 · NewsDrum: Lokpal 210 complaints · Business Standard: ₹16,518 crore electoral bonds · The Wire: electoral trusts ₹3,811 crore · ADR: national party funding FY24 · Morung Express: faceless assessment first phase · TheTaxCorp: burden of proof in DA cases · BNB Legal: Wasudeo Kaidalwar · ICAC: Prevention of Bribery Ordinance · National Law Review: UK Supreme Court rejects appeal on first UWO · Electoral Commission via Wired-Gov: quarterly donation reports · SC Observer: electoral bonds judgment (2024) restores the Section 182 cap