India’s Supreme Court on Thursday banned electoral bonds, a mysterious source of funding for elections that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues for political parties, especially the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The court announced its verdict on an ongoing petition calling for the bonds to be scrapped. The scheme has been under scrutiny, and the top court had in November said the bonds “put a premium on opacity” and can be “misused for money laundering”.
