In a fevered pitch for electoral bonds, the Attorney General on Thursday argued in the Supreme Court that in a democracy, voters had no business to know how a political party received its funds. However, not willing to buy the Centre's claim, the apex court observed that democracy gives citizens the right to know. The cross-fire ended with the bench reserving its verdict on the fate of these bonds till Friday.
In its arguments for the electoral bond scheme introduced on January 2, 2018, the Centre faced opposition — both from the Election Commission and petitioners led by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) — who claimed that there was a lack of transparency. The task of defending the 'opaque' bonds was left to Attorney General KK Venugopal, who stated that the government introduced the bonds to defeat the 'vice' of black money, adding that transparency cannot be used as a means to defeat a good scheme that curbs the menace.
The bench then asked the Centre, "Why do you advocate for anonymity of donors? Your scheme can have larger implications. The donor may like to keep his identity secret, but the voter has a right to transparency in elections." To the question,Venugopal responded, "Why should the voter want to know where the party has got its money from?"
"It's none of his concern. All that the Court must see is whether this is a forward step to curb black money. It's good to speak of transparency, but we are going to kill a scheme with transparency," he said.
The Centre's submission struck a discordant note with the bench, which retorted, "There is a larger issue that you are missing to see. There may be an illegal state of affairs, but here what is being done is to legitimise it," referring to shell companies.
"There is so much opacity in the system and you block the Election Commission from knowing who the donors are. What about the right of voter to know who is funding the party?" the bench added.
Additionally, the SC asked the Centre if it had data on the percentage of cash donations to explain unaccounted cash in elections, to which the EC came to the Centre's rescue. It stated that anonymous cash donations (less than Rs 20,000) accounted for 90 per cent of political party funding in 2015-16 and 62 per cent in 2016-17. These donations accounted for 48 per cent (Rs 468 crore) of the total Rs 997-crore in donations received by BJP and 77 per cent (Rs 138 crore) for the Congress' total collection of Rs 180 crore for the year 2016-17. By the next year (2017-18), 220 crore electoral bonds were issued, of which BJP received Rs 210 crore as against Rs 5 crore for Congress. Interestingly, the anonymous cash deposit for Congress increased that year to 84 per cent (141.5 crore) out of a total of Rs 168 crore in donations.
Top Court Prickly
- Under the scheme currently, only the banks know the identity of the donors and recipients.
- Apex court observed that democracy gives citizens the right to know source of a party’s funding
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