Challenging the Electoral Bond : The Supreme Court will hear the petitions challenging the electoral bonds in the third week of March. The petitioner has raised apprehensions of corruption in the system of electoral bonds created to give donations to political parties. However, the government has claimed that this has brought transparency in the process of political donations.
What is electoral bond
In 2017, the central government enacted the Electoral Bonds Act in the name of cleaning up the process of political donations. Under this, there is a provision to buy bonds from the selected branch of State Bank in the first 10 days of every quarter and donate it to the political party. It was said that this would reduce the amount of donations received in cash. The bank will have complete information about the customer buying the bond. This will increase transparency.
what is petition
Association for Democratic Reform (ADR) and Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM) have said that there is no transparency in this system. There is a provision to keep it confidential as to who bought the bond from the bank and to which party it was donated. Even the Election Commission is not given this information. That is, if a company taking advantage of the government donates to the ruling party through bonds, then no one will come to know. This will encourage corruption. Not only this, foreign companies have also been allowed to buy bonds. Whereas, earlier there was a ban on taking donations from foreign companies.
It has also been said by the ADR that from the different audit reports and the information given by the parties to the Income Tax Department, it has come to know that about 95 per cent of the donations received by the BJP are through electoral bonds. It is clear that it has actually become a means of benefiting the ruling party. There is a possibility of this happening even more during the Lok Sabha elections. Therefore, the courts should immediately ban the donations through bonds.
Election Commission’s answer
The Election Commission has also said that there is no transparency in the electoral bond system. There is a possibility of promotion of black money due to this. Due to the exemption of taking donations from foreign companies also, there will be an apprehension about the influence of foreign companies on government policies.
Hearing on implementation of RTI in parties
The Supreme Court will also hear the demand to bring political parties under the purview of the Right to Information Act ie RTI. The court has said that this hearing will be held in the first week of April. A bench headed by Chief Justice Chandrachud (DY Chandrachud) has asked the government to file a reply on this in 2 weeks.