In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court of India scrapped the electoral bonds scheme which was introduced by the current Modi government, calling it unconstitutional. The five-judge bench led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud unanimously delivered the verdict.
The apex court has also instructed banks to immediately stop issuing such bonds, while State Bank of India has been directed to reveal the data regarding purchase of the bonds since April 12, 2019, three weeks before the results of the upcoming general election. The top court has also asked the Election Commission of India to publish the data on its website by March 13, 2024, for the general public.
This verdict is not only a slap in the face for the political parties – especially the one in power, it also blocks the anonymous donations made to the political parties in order to convert black money into white. However, the reason why this verdict is pivotal even more so is because it’s aimed at protecting the common people’s right to information, since now the polling panel will have to reveal which political parties received how much in donations and from whom. Indeed, this information will be limited to the donations received via electoral bonds only and the common people will never be able to access the amount earned by parties through other means.
For the novice, the electoral bonds scheme was introduced by the Central government in 2017 and was legally implemented on January 29, 2018. However, petitions were filed challenging the move from 2017 onwards itself. The scheme allowed any Indian citizen or businessmen or a company to buy electoral bonds valued at Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, 10 lakh or Rs 1 crore from certain branches of State Bank of India, and could anonymously donate it to political parties as per their wish. The political parties had to encash the bonds within 15 days of the issuance. The scheme also had the provision for foreign companies to issue electoral bonds through their Indian subsidiaries, which was not allowed until then.
The Reserve Bank of India had raised concerns about the misuse of bonds by the shell companies which indulge in money laundering practices. However, the Centre did not withdraw the scheme. According to Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) organisation, which was one of the petitioners that challenged the move, political parties had received the funding of staggering Rs 16,000 crore through electoral bonds from 2018 to 2022, with nearly 57% of those donations going to the ruling BJP. The authenticity of this claim will be proven only after ECI publishes the data after March 13. The data from ECI states that BJP received funding of Rs 5,272 crore through electoral bonds between 2018 to March 2022, in comparison to Indian National Congress’s Rs 952 crore.
The verdict will probably not affect the funding to the political parties for the upcoming general elections as the judgment came after six long years from the time the petitions were filed. The hearing of this matter was completed in November 2023 itself but the court had reserved the verdict and so, it would not be a stretch to say that the political parties scored two more months to engage in a legalised form of corruption. As per the petitioners, electoral bonds were sold in large numbers from January 2 to January 11 this year at 29 different branches in the country.
It is obvious that this money will be used by political parties for their campaigns. Be it for encouraging sitting MLAs or MPs to defect or bribing people to vote for the candidates, a major part of this ‘expenditure’ is taken care of through the money received by way of donations. Since most of the funding consists of black money, one cannot expect this verdict to entirely cleanse the electoral process overnight. For that, the ECI needs to operate strictly and do it without any biases.
Only one such Chief Election Commissioner of India who truly brought in revolutionary measures was T N Seshan, who listed 150 malpractices carried out during the elections. Seshan introduced reforms such as enforcement of election code of conduct, limit on election candidate’s expenditure, banning bribes to buy votes through money and alcohol, disallowing candidates to use religion in their campaign speeches and so on. However, many more forms of corruption were eventually created by the candidates. Although the Supreme Court’s verdict will not entirely stop the corruption that happens during the elections, it will limit the efforts of legalising it in unconstitutional ways to some extent.
