New Delhi: In its interim judgment last week on the electoral bonds scheme introduced by the Narendra Modi government, the Supreme Court asked political parties to submit details of donors to the Election Commission in a sealed cover — a direction that could be easily circumvented by parties.
According to the finance ministry notification, the lone bank authorised to sell these bonds — the State Bank of India (SBI) — is legally expected to have details of the donors. Therefore, political parties could very well claim ignorance in the matter since, according to the scheme, they do not need to know who donated through the bonds.
The notification says that the confidential information regarding the bonds can be disclosed if so directed by a competent court, but only the authorised bank can disclose this information.
“The information furnished by the buyer shall be treated confidential by the authorised bank and shall not be disclosed to any authority for any purposes, except when demanded by a competent court or upon registration of criminal case by any law enforcement agency,” clause 7(4) of the notification states.
The electoral bonds scheme has come under severe criticism from several quarters since it is argued that far from eliminating black money from politics, the scheme enables it to be turned into ‘white’ money.
Also read: Supreme Court has contradicted itself in its interim order on electoral bonds
The process
Any person can go to the SBI and purchase an electoral bond, which is essentially a promissory note, and carries neither the name of the buyer nor the payee.
The person can then pass on the bond to a political party, which can get it encashed from SBI. Now, the party may or may not have knowledge of who actually bought the electoral bond, since it could have received the bond from a person other than the actual buyer, technically creating a fig leaf for the political party, which can claim complete ignorance over who the actual buyer is.
“Political parties can get away by saying that they have no idea who donated the bonds since they are only required to have information about the amount they have received through electoral bonds, and not from whom,” said Jagdeep Chhokar, founder member of the Association of Democratic Reforms, a petitioner in electoral bonds case in the SC. “And they would be well within their rights to claim ignorance.”
RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj added: “Technically, we know that people who are donating would be telling the party that we are giving you money. But formally, the parties are not supposed to have this information. So they can very logically say we don’t know who donated what.”
Criticism of the SC judgment
The SC judgment too has been criticised for not allowing complete transparency to voters, since it has directed parties to provide details only in a sealed cover.
Moreover, by giving time till 30 May to the parties to furnish these details, the judgment has precluded voters from having any knowledge of who has funded the parties when they go out to vote in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
“The reality is that the electoral bonds throw up a huge challenge of anonymous political funding, and the interim order doesn’t help in solving that problem,” Bhardwaj said.
There’s no need to solve the puzzle in the middle of the election process….. SC should have avoided their order/comments in view of the ongoing election process….