A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court is scheduled to pronounce on February 15 its judgment on the legality of the electoral bonds scheme, which allows anonymous donations to political parties.
The five-judge Bench is headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud. The members of the Bench are Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B.R. Gavai — two of the seniormost judges of the Supreme Court — and J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
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The petitioners in the case, which include among others NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Congress leader Jaya Thakur, had argued that the scheme violated citizens’ right to information about the funding of political parties and promoted corruption. They said amendments were introduced even in the Companies Act to allow corporate entities under a cloak of anonymity to donate to political parties via purchase of electoral bonds. The petitioners had contended that amendments made via Finance Acts of 2016 and 2017, both passed as Money Bills, had through the electoral bonds scheme “opened the floodgates to unlimited political donations”.
The five-judge Bench, however, did not wade into the legal question concerning the passage of the electoral bonds scheme as a Money Bill. It left this issue to be decided by a seven-judge Bench.
The Centre had countered that confidentiality about the identity of the donors and their contributions was key to the electoral bonds scheme. It argued that striking down the electoral bonds scheme would return the country to the earlier regime when black money was cleaned through political donations in unaccounted cash.
