The Supreme Court on Thursday levelled the playing field by striking down a six-year-old electoral bonds scheme that made political funding more opaque than it already was. The court found that the law had tilted the balance in favour of the party in power, as it gave it the means to access information on donors, though the scheme’s USP was anonymisation.
The right to information scored a momentous victory in a long while as a five-member Constitution bench unanimously held the controversial law unconstitutional. The bench ruled that its stated cloak of anonymity violated the principles of free and fair elections. While the law was sold as a scheme to suck out black money from the system and address criminalisation of politics, the court said it did not clear the proportionality test of the least restriction on fundamental rights.
It said the least restrictive method was to facilitate contributions below Rs 20,000 through other electronic means. As for bigger contributions, it pointed to the electoral trust route. In its landmark verdict, the court directed the State Bank of India, the issuing bank, to share with the Election Commission of India full data on who contributed what to which party so far, and the latter to publish it on its website. A humongous 57 percent of the electoral bonds issued so far have been pocketed by the BJP; the Congress got 10 percent and the crumbs went to other smaller parties.
The court observed that political contributions enhance access to legislators and could influence policy-making. The possibility of a quid pro quo because of the close nexus between money and politics is quite real, it pointed out. It also struck down amendments to the income tax law that lifted the cap on political funding by corporates from the earlier 7.5 percent of the previous three years’ average net profit.
The ruling takes the country back to the situation before January 2018, when electoral bonds were notified. At that point, an overwhelming majority of political funds came through unregulated voluntary contributions, long form for black money.
After 2017-18, an estimated 47 percent of the contributions came through electoral bonds or regulated money. This is the first significant victory for the beleaguered INDIA bloc that otherwise appears to be disintegrating faster than a meteor. Since it came in the courtroom and not through agitation on the streets, the opposition's ability to exploit it remains suspect.
