Bonds gone, bind stays

Petitioners welcome apex court’s ruling against electoral bonds, but say it will not make political funding transparent

- SONI MISHRA

In 2017, shortly after the budget speech in Parliament, in which then finance minister Arun Jaitley spelt out the government’s intent to introduce the Electoral Bonds Scheme, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Common Cause, two civil society organisations, mounted a joint legal fight against the scheme. Around the same time, Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd), a Navy veteran who now describes himself as a transparency campaigner, began his dogged pursuit against the scheme through the Right to Information Act.

It took seven years for these activists to find success, with the Supreme Court, on February 15, declaring the scheme unconstitutional and invalid. “The court has upheld the right to information of the common man about funding of political parties,” said ADR head Maj Gen Anil Verma (retd). “The scheme had grave anomalies which the Election Commission, the Reserve Bank of India, government departments and civil society organisations had pointed out, but the government had rammed it through Parliament in the form of a Money Bill to escape scrutiny by the Rajya Sabha.”

The petitioners had argued that wide-ranging amendments in the Finance Act, 2017; Finance Act, 2016; the Representation of the People Act, 1951; the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934; the Income Tax Act, 1961; and the Companies Act, 2013, were brought in as part of a Money Bill. The apex court has not yet resolved the matter about the government's money bill route.