Supreme Court verdict on poll bonds today

Tribune News Service

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, February 14

Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Supreme Court will pronounce its verdict on the validity of electoral bonds scheme tomorrow.

A five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, which, on November 2 last year, reserved its verdict on petitions challenging the validity of the electoral bonds scheme, will pronounce it at 10.30 am.

Introduced through the Finance Act, 2017, an electoral bond is a bearer instrument like a promissory note that can be purchased by an Indian citizen or an Indian company whose identity would remain secret from everybody, except the SBI from which it has to be purchased. Once purchased, the buyer can give it to a political party, which can get that money using its bank account.

The Finance Act, 2017, made amendments to several statutes, including the RBI Act, Representation of People Act, Income Tax Act and the Companies Act, to facilitate the scheme that was notified on January 2, 2018.

In a PIL filed in 2017, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) alleged corruption and subversion of democracy through illicit and foreign funding of political parties and lack of transparency in their accounts. Besides the ADR, CPM and Common Cause have also challenged the electoral bonds scheme.

Maintaining that several constitutional issues having a tremendous bearing on the sanctity of electoral process were involved in the petitions challenging the validity of scheme, the petitioners had earlier urged the SC to refer the matter to a Constitution Bench.

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