New Delhi: With a fresh round of state assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana announced Saturday, the stalemate over the legal validity of the controversial electoral bond scheme is only expected to get extended.
The Supreme Court had, in April, declined to give its final ruling on the matter, saying there wasn’t much time left for a detailed examination of the issue before the Lok Sabha elections. It had asked political parties to submit donor details to the Election Commission in a sealed cover by 30 May.
“All that we would like to state for the present is that the rival contentions give rise to weighty issues which have a tremendous bearing on the sanctity of the electoral process in the country,” the court had said in its interim judgment.
“Such weighty issues would require an in-depth hearing which cannot be concluded and the issues answered within the limited time that is available before the process of funding through the Electoral Bonds comes to a closure, as per the schedule noted earlier.”
Current status
While the political parties have submitted donor details to the EC as directed by the court — even though the BJP and the Congress flouted the 30 May deadline — nothing has been done with the submissions so far.
The EC had, in its affidavit to the apex court, argued in favour of making details of donors public, but it is not doing so despite being in possession of these details due to the Supreme Court’s injunction to submit the details in sealed covers.
“We are just custodians of the submissions made by the parties… We cannot even see what the parties have submitted until the court directs us to,” said an EC official who did not wish to be named.
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Petitioners silent, but won’t give up
Meanwhile, the petitioners — the Communist Party of India (Marxist), NGO Common Cause and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) — have also not mentioned the case.
“We are doing what we can, but we are helpless since nothing is quite happening in the court,” Jagdeep Chhokar, founder of ADR, said. “It is very frustrating… But we will not give up.”
It is learnt that the petitioners in the case were dismayed by the court’s interim judgment and have, therefore, been reluctant to mention the case again.
“First, the court asked for the submission in a sealed cover; two, it set the deadline after the Lok Sabha elections; three, it asked political parties to file details of the donors even though it is amply clear that the parties can claim to not have the details,” said a legal source, who did not wish to be identified.
With the court busy with daily hearings in the Ayodhya matter, it is unlikely that the electoral bonds case would be heard before the elections in the states are concluded.
SBI has donor details
According to the finance ministry notification on electoral bonds, the lone bank authorised to sell these bonds, the State Bank of India (SBI), is the only legal entity that has details of the donors. Therefore, the political parties can claim to have no details of the donors, rendering the entire exercise of submissions to the EC futile.
The scheme states that any donor can go to the SBI and purchase an electoral bond, which is essentially a promissory note that carries neither the name of the buyer nor the payee. The donor can then pass on the bond to a political party, which can get it encashed from the SBI.
However, the SBI also seems unwilling to part with any information. In response to an RTI query by activist Vihar Durve, the bank said the information is held in “fiduciary capacity”, and can’t be given out.
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