Kapil Sibal, one of the lawyers for the petitioners in Electoral Bonds case that has created a mini earthquake in political circles today, said Supreme Court's order dismantling the donation scheme will lead to a more level playing field for political parties in India.
"Something significant has happened in terms of the future of our country. Funding should be done in such a way that it doesn't skew the free and fair nature of the elections," he said.
Sibal, a former cabinet minister, said the scheme had led to a massive imbalance between the fortunes of those in power and those in the opposition. He pointed out that 95% of the total proceeds under the scheme went only to the party in power at the center - the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The secret nature of the scheme -- in which any person or company or association can anonymously donate any amount to any political party -- made it a suitable candidate for facilitating corruption. The bond can be purchased from a bank, taken by the donor to a political party, and the party can then submit the bond at SBI and get the money.
"Nobody gives an electoral bond for 10 lakhs or 15 lakhs. It will be in crores. If you have funded your party with 5,000-6,000 crore, only the rich could have done that, and they must have, in the process, got some favors. And that's exactly what the Supreme Court says, that nobody gives this kind of money without a possible quid-pro-quo. What that quid-pro-quo is something that needs to be investigated. In a sense, this provides a level playing field in a democracy, and it also exposes the BJP," he said.
He said the scheme, introduced by the central government a year before the 2019 elections, was the brainchild of his friend and former finance minister Arun Jaitley.
"The scheme had nothing to do with elections. It was really the bonding between the corporate sector and the BJP..the donations they've received over the years amounts Rs 5,000-6,000 crores," he said.
Sibal said outfits that got this money were using the funds to buy off MPs and MLAs belonging to less-fortunate parties.
"With so much money in your kitty, you can topple governments, you can build your infrastructure as a political party, you can build your infrastructure for RSS, you can set up a communication network throughout the country. You can do what you like and there's no accountability," he said, adding that the citizen's of this country have been fooled.
A five-judge Constitution Bench presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud struck down the the electoral bonds scheme as unconstitutional, holding that citizens have a right to know where political parties are generating their funds from to make an informed choice when deciding which party to vote for.
It also held that the aim of defeating black money cannot be a justification for curbing such an important right of the citizen. It asked SBI to disclose all the details of the electoral bonds issued so far and to stop issuing them from now on.