During the hearing on a bunch of petitions challenging the validity of anonymous funding of political parties through electoral bonds, introduced through a finance bill in 2017, a bench of CJI D Y Chandrachud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra asked the Election Commission to keep ready for its perusal the details of electoral bond funding of political parties, as per the SC's interim order of April 12, 2019.
The 2019 order had said, "The just and proper interim direction would be to require all the political parties who have received donations through electoral bonds to submit to the Election Commission of India in sealed cover, detailed particulars of the donors as against each bond; the amount of each such bond and the full particulars of the credit received against each bond, namely, the particulars of the bank account to which the amount has been credited and the date of each such credit."
The EC's counsel Amit Sharma said political parties have submitted details for only 2019 as the SC, in its interim order, had asked for disclosure of details up to April 12, 2019. The bench disagreed and said the interim order was a continuous mandamus and the subsequent paragraph in the interim order was for electoral bonds that were issued till April 12, 2019.
"You (EC) must have details of donations made to political parties through electoral bonds as per the interim order. Do keep it with you in court. We may look into it at an appropriate time," the CJI-led bench told Sharma.
Opening the arguments on behalf of NGO 'Association for Democratic Reforms', advocate Prashant Bhushan said electoral bonds were issued by the government disregarding the warnings from both the EC and the Reserve Bank of India about their deleterious impact on transparency of funding to political parties, democracy and economy.
"Electoral bonds have legalised unlimited anonymous donations by allowing foreign entities, large-scale entities, unknown hidden entities and benami companies to funnel unaccounted black money through shell companies. With the emergence of electoral bonds, illegal money has been enabled to enter quite conveniently into the electoral process. Large-scale corruption, ie crony capitalism, is being enabled because of the quid pro quo relationship between the government in power and corporate giants," Bhushan said.
He added that in six years, 31 parties had received Rs 16,438 crore as donations. "Rs 9,188 crore was received from electoral bonds (55.9%) of which Rs 4,615 crore was from the corporate sector (28.1%) and Rs 2,635 crore from other sources (16%)," he said, adding that donations through poll bonds had risen by seven-and-a-half times between 2018 and 2022. He said BJP received 74.7% of all electoral bonds purchased in the country amounting to Rs 5,272 crore.
When citizens do not know the source of funding of parties, it infringes upon their fundamental right to know and truncates their right to choose the honest candidate belonging to a party that is clean, Bhushan argued. "Electoral bonds are encouraging corruption, quid pro quo tendencies among corporates and skewing the level playing field in elections," he said.
Kajal Agarwal
