NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday referred a batch of pleas challenging the controversial Electoral Bonds scheme for political funding of parties to a larger Constitution Bench which is to be heard on October 30.
A bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and also comprising JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra decided to refer the matter to the Constitution Bench of at least five judges.
"In view of the importance of the issue raised, and with regard to Article 145(4) of the Constitution of India, the matter be placed before a bench of at least five judges. The matter will be retained on October 30, 2023," the bench said.
Dealing with the petitions pending even after six years of filing, in the previous hearing on October 10, the apex court had listed the matter for consideration on October 31 and to be continued on November 1 if the hearing is not completed.
However, considering the legal issue involved relating to the passage of laws as money bills and upon the petitioners' request the Court agreed to pass the matter to a larger bench.
The pleas against the scheme filed in 2017 in the apex court which are pending even after six years may come to an end by this decision.
Through the Electoral bonds which were introduced in the Finance Act, 2017, registered political parties that have secured not less than 1 per cent of the votes polled in the last Lok Sabha or legislative assembly elections are eligible to receive funding.
As per Petitioner NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), anonymous funding through electoral bonds promotes corruption and violates the citizens’ right to have a corruption-free nation.
It was contended that the identity of the donors could never be known to the public and referred to reservations raised by the Reserve Bank of India and Election Commission to the Scheme.
During the previous hearing, Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioners said: “This promotes corruption as the source of funding is anonymous, it is violative of Article 21 and the 'non-decision' in the case compounding the problem.”
In another hearing in March, Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave said that the same is an issue that goes to the core of “our democratic existence” and is “serious”.
According to one of the petitioners, so far Rs 12,000 crore has been paid to political parties through electoral bonds and two-thirds of the amount has gone to one major political party.
Two lawyers were appointed earlier including Neha Rathi, as nodal counsel for ensuring a smooth hearing of the PILs, saying they would coordinate to ensure that a common compilation of judgements and other records are filed.
On January 31, this year the top court had said the three sets of petitions on the electoral bonds scheme, bringing political parties within the ambit of the Right to Information Act and those challenging amendments in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act will be heard separately.
The court also said that since the bonds were allowed to be released in 2018, 2019, and 2020 without interruption and there were sufficient safeguards, there was justification to not stay them at the moment.