New Delhi: Authorised State Bank of India (SBI) branches across the country may issue electoral bonds between Monday (November 6) and November 20, the Union finance ministry announced on Saturday.
This will be the 29th batch of electoral bond sales since the BJP-led Union government introduced the scheme in 2018.
The finance ministry’s announcement came two days after the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on a batch of pleas challenging the validity of electoral bonds and weeks ahead of assembly elections in five states.
Electoral bonds are interest-free financial instruments that individuals or groups may use to make anonymous donations to political parties.
They are issued by authorised SBI branches in discrete amounts ranging between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1 crore after payment via cheque or digital means. Payment via cash is not allowed.
Parties need to be registered and have received at least 1% of the vote in the last parliamentary or assembly election in order to receive electoral bonds.
The Union government proposed the scheme in 2017 saying it would bring much-needed transparency to how parties are funded in India.
But critics have argued that the anonymous nature of donations through the scheme violates the public’s right to information about funding of political parties.
They have also raised concerns that the Union government may access SBI data about the identity of electoral bond donors.
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Attorney general R. Venkataramani submitted last week that citizens have no fundamental right to know the sources of electoral bond funds.
“There can be no general right to know anything and everything without being subjected to reasonable restrictions,” he said according to LiveLaw.
Two days later, the Supreme Court began hearing four petitions challenging the scheme’s validity.
The petitioners urged the court to declare political parties as public offices to bring them under the ambit of the Right to Information Act and to compel them to disclose their income and expenditure.
But Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, who was on the constitution bench hearing the matter, said that the scheme’s provision for anonymous donations may be aimed at preventing repercussions from parties to which a person or entity has not donated.
“Suppose you are contributing to a party not in power… suppose the donor is carrying on business in the state and his name is made available to all… There is logic there; whether it is valid or not, we have to decide,” CJI Chandrachud was quoted as saying by The Hindu.
Kapil Sibal, counsel for one of the petitioners, also told the bench that there is no regulation in the scheme that specifically ties funding received by bonds to uses for electoral purposes.
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“I make a donation of ₹10 crore to a political party through electoral bonds… The party can give it to a mainstream media channel and propagate my ideology or give a present to someone. I have no control over it,” he was quoted as saying by The Leaflet.
After hearing the petitions, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict and asked the Election Commission of India to collect data on donations received by parties through electoral bonds until September 30.
The Hindu conducted an analysis of electoral bond funding using data provided by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), which was one of the petitioners from the apex court’s hearing.
It found that not only did the share of national parties’ income through unknown sources increase since electoral bonds were introduced in 2018, but that these bonds were primarily behind this increase.
Between FY15-17 and FY19-22 (excluding FY18), the BJP’s share of income via unknown sources rose from 58% to 68%, The Hindu‘s report said.
Additionally, money received by the BJP through electoral bonds – Rs 5,271 crore between FY18 and FY22 – dwarfs the earnings of other parties, making up 57% of all parties’ funding through electoral bonds.
Source: ADR.