Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President and senior lawyer Adish C Aggarwala has written a letter to President Droupadi Murmu seeking an immediate direction for a rehearing of the electoral bonds case by way of a presidential reference in the interest of 'complete justice'.
The SCBA sought a presidential reference on the electoral bonds case, so that the entire proceedings could be reheard and complete justice could be ensured to the Parliament of India, political parties, corporates and general public.
"The most dangerous part of the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Electoral Bonds Scheme case is its direction to the Election Commission of India to correlate the donations and make public which political party received how much from which corporate entity. It has a potential to sound a death-knell to both parliamentary democracy and corporate freedom in our nation," the SCBA letter said.
The corporate donations scheme was brought forth because of the absence of poll funding mechanism in our nation, and in order to enable political parties to resort to lawful methods to augment resources for poll purposes, it said.
The electoral bond scheme came into effect due to the provisions of the Finance Act, 2017 which, among other things, amended the provisions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act, 1934, the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the Income Tax Act, 1961, and the Companies Act. 2013, the letter of the SCBA said.
"Therefore, it would be perverse to doubt the legislative intention behind the scheme," it appealed to the SC.
If the Supreme Court prohibited the electoral bonds scheme, the prohibition should come into effect only prospectively, and not retrospectively, it said.
Revealing the names of corporates that had contributed to different political parties would render them vulnerable to victimization. The possibility of them being singled out by those parties that had received less contribution from them, and harassed cannot be ruled out if the names of corporates and their quantum of contributions to various parties are revealed. This will be reneging on the promise given to them while accepting their voluntary contributions, the letter claimed.
Disclosing such sensitive information, that too retrospectively, will result in chilling effect in corporate donations and participation in the democratic process. Besides drying up further donations, such an act would discourage and dissuade foreign corporate entities from setting up shop in India, the SCBA letter said.
