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The Supreme Court of India has struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme, recognizing that anonymous high-value donations undermine electoral democracy and violate voters' right to information. The Court found the scheme and related amendments to the Companies Act to be unconstitutional, promoting transparency in political funding. This ruling is part of a broader effort by the Court to enhance voter rights and ensure the integrity of elections.

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9 views1 page

Print Job

The Supreme Court of India has struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme, recognizing that anonymous high-value donations undermine electoral democracy and violate voters' right to information. The Court found the scheme and related amendments to the Companies Act to be unconstitutional, promoting transparency in political funding. This ruling is part of a broader effort by the Court to enhance voter rights and ensure the integrity of elections.

Uploaded by

ka1111989198
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Unbonded

The electoral bonds verdict is a blow for freedom of expression

Anonymous donations of high value tend to undermine electoral democracy and


governance as they facilitate a quid pro quo culture involving donors and
beneficiaries. In striking down the Electoral Bond Scheme (EBS) under which
anyone could buy electoral bonds and donate them to political parties for
encashment, the Supreme Court of India has recognised this malaise and struck a
blow for democracy and transparency in political funding. The Court found that
the entire scheme violates the Constitution, especially the voters’ right to
information. It further found manifestly arbitrary, the amendment to the
Companies Act that removed the cap of 7.5% of a company’s profit that can be
donated to political parties without any requirement to disclose details of the
recipient parties in its profit and loss accounts. It has also mandated disclosure of
donation details since 2019. The judgment is one more in a long line of verdicts
the Court has handed down to promote voter rights and preserve the purity of
elections. Its earlier interventions led to the featuring of the ‘None of the Above’
option on the ballot, the removal of the protection given to legislators from
immediate disqualification on conviction for a criminal o!ence, the mandatory
disclosure of the assets and criminal antecedents of candidates in their election
a"davits and expedited trials for MPs and MLAs involved in criminal o!ences.

The Court’s reasoning is unexceptionable. It found that the primary justification


for the EBS — curbing the use of ‘black money’ for political or electoral funding by
allowing donations through banking channels — failed the test of proportionality,
as it was not the least restrictive measure to abridge the voters’ right to know. It
has made the logical connection between unidentified corporate donations and
the likelihood of policy decisions being tailored to suit the donors. The judgment is
a natural follow-up to a principle it had laid down years ago that the voters’
freedom of expression under Article 19(1)(a) will be incomplete without access to
information on a candidate’s background. The principle has now been extended to
removing the veil on corporate donors who may have been funding ruling parties
in exchange for favours. While the verdict may help ease the hold that donors may
have on governance through money power, a question that arises is whether the
validity of the scheme could have been decided earlier or the issuance of bonds
on a regular basis stayed. How much of the thousands of crores of rupees given to
parties under this scheme resulted in policy measures favourable to the donors or
helped fund the deployment of additional campaign resources will never be
known. This was a fit case for the grant of an interim stay.

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