New Delhi: The Supreme Court will today pronounce its order on a plea seeking stay on issuance of Electoral Bonds. The order from the top court will be pronounced by a bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian. The plea in the apex court was filed by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) seeking an interim direction to bar the sale of Electoral Bonds in view of the upcoming State Assembly elections in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Union Territory of Puducherry.
In its plea filed on March 9 this year, the ADR had sought urgent listing of its 2017 writ petition challenging the Electoral Bonds scheme. The plea raised serious apprehensions that any further sale of Electoral Bonds before the upcoming state assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam, “would further increase illegal and illicit funding of political parties through shell companies.”
The NGO also informed the top court that the case was last heard in January 2020 and even after a similar application was filed on December 27, 2020 seeking urgent hearing of the case, the matter was not listed.
It must be noted that the electoral bonds were introduced through Finance Act 2017, which in turn amended three other statutes – the RBI Act, the Income Tax Act and the Representation of People Act – for enabling introduction of such bonds.
The plea in the top court also stated that the consequence of the amendments was that annual contribution reports of political parties to be furnished to the Election Commission of India need not mention names and addresses of those contributing by way of electoral bonds, thereby killing transparency in political funding.
The order from the top court assumes significance as elections in four states – Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Bengal – and the Union Territory of Puducherry will begin on Saturday and the counting of notes will take place on May 2.
On March 24, the top court flagged the issue of possible misuse of funds received through electoral bonds by political parties for illegal purposes like terrorism and asked the Centre whether there was any control over how these funds were put to use.
A bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde told Attorney General KK Venugopal that the government should look into this issue of possible misuse of funds received through electoral bonds for illegal purposes like terrorism.
The bench reserved order on an application seeking a direction to the Centre and others not to open any further window for sale of electoral bonds ahead of the upcoming assembly elections and also during the pendency of a PIL pertaining to funding of political parties and alleged lack of transparency in their accounts.
On January 20 last year, the apex court had refused to grant interim stay on the 2018 Electoral Bonds Scheme and sought responses of the Centre and the Election Commission on an interim application by the NGO seeking stay on the scheme.