Bond Broken: The SC Verdict

It is a landmark verdict. Just a few weeks before the notification for the Lok Sabha Elections is to be issued, the Supreme Court of India has called secret funding of polls through Electoral Bonds as unconstitutional. Supreme Court strikes down NDA’s 2018 Electoral Bonds scheme. By scrapping the Electoral Bonds meant to generate funds for the political parties Supreme Court has introduced a new level of transparency in the electoral management of India. Elections have always generated attention in India for different reasons. But donations to the political parties have always been the cause of concern. Individual funding and even institutional funding has been in the vogue that has influenced the poll outcomes from time to time. BJP led NDA government in 2017 launched the scheme of Electoral Bonds through the Union Budget of 2017 .It was announced by the then Foreign Minister, late Arun Jaitley with the motive of curbing the use of Black Money in the Elections. But in its historical verdict the apex court has raised objections on the use of these bonds to generate funds for contesting the elections by the political parties. On 15th February it ordered the State Bank of India (SBI) to stop issuing the electoral bonds immediately and submit all the information regarding the bonds sold, names of the donors and recipients to the Election Commission of India (ECI).SBI was authorised to issue the Electoral Bonds. The Solicitor General had argued that the political affiliation is the inner core of a person’s private life that is being protected by the state through poll bonds. The apex court has disagreed with the government’s argument that a voter’s right to know could be extinguished by the electoral bonds scheme to ensure donor privacy, a fundamental right that protects political self-expression. The information of the donors was to be hidden from the public domain to uphold their privacy. The apex court has said that the public has every right to know the source of funding. As an individual or an institution can alter the agenda of the political parties with their funding and thus having an impact on the public good. Thus the electoral bonds are not an ideal source of funding for the elections. Supreme Court has underlined glaring gaps in this scheme. The five judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud, Justices J.B. Pardiwala, Sanjiv Khanna, B.R.Gaval and Manoj Mishra in their landmark verdict striking down the electoral bonds have underlined that a political party is a relevant political unit and as such the right to information about a candidate contesting the elections is also applicable to the political parties. So the information on the political funding would enable voter to access if there is correlation between the policy making and the financial contributions. The bench has rightly observed that the political party that receives the funding through these bonds can ascertain the identity of the donor through transaction details. Electoral bonds provide the economically resourced contributors who already have a seat at the table a selective anonymity vis-à-vis the public and not the political party. Gaps in the scheme allow the parties to know the particulars of the contributions. Thus the apex court has rejected the argument that the scheme protects the confidentiality of the contributor akin to the system of secret ballots. Scheme lacks the regulatory checks to prevent the trading of bonds, though Clause 14 states that bonds shall not be eligible for trading. The significant point raised by the Supreme Court that ultimately declares this scheme unconstitutional is that the Electoral Bond is not the least restrictive means to achieve the purpose of curbing the black money in the electoral process and stating that there are other alternatives. The verdict has broken the bond but it has infused vitality in the democracy of the nation, creating the space for accountability and transparency besides upholding the rights of the common citizens and the will of the nation.