electoral bond scheme gov , supreme court and social activist

Challenging the Electoral Bond Scheme

With the constitutionality of electoral bonds being contested more strongly, the citizen must push for a more level-playing field in the next round of elections

भारत में राजनीतिक दल परंपरागत रूप से अपने धन के स्रोतों और अनुप्रयोगों की किसी भी प्रकार की सार्वजनिक जांच के खिलाफ रहे हैं.

पॉलिटिकल फंडिंग को लेकर के सबसे ज्यादा आवाज कौन उठाता है

1 Civil society has been campaigning for long to empower the voter 

2 They  improving voter access to background information on the candidates in the electoral fray, and to bring about greater transparency in the obscure domain of political funding.

3  For this ,the  instrument of public interest litigation (PIL) has been deployed to good effect.

4  The campaign is premised on the citizen’s democratic right to information, which is integral to the fundamental right to speech and expression under the Constitution.

A veil over the corporate donor

आज के समय में क्या ट्रेंड चल रहा है

1 But The political establishment, on its part, has sought to undermine these hard-fought victories by legislative legerdemain and ingenious schemes fashioned to obfuscate the identity of corporate donors.

राजनीतिक प्रतिष्ठान ने, अपनी ओर से, विधायी नेतृत्वकर्ता और कॉर्पोरेट दाताओं की पहचान को अस्पष्ट करने के लिए बनाई गई सरल योजनाओं द्वारा इन कठिन संघर्षों की जीत को कमजोर करने की कोशिश की है।

2  The United Progressive Alliance government had devised / तैयार  the Electoral Trusts Scheme (2013) to create a smokescreen between political parties and their corporate donors.

3  The National Democratic Alliance, the succeeding government, came up with a far more ambitious and ingenious Electoral Bond Scheme (EBS).

4 EBS in January 2018

which was touted as a sincere effort to clean up electoral democracy by incentivising political donations through banking channels.

To begin with, the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) 

was retrospectively amended through the Finance Act of 2016 to permit Indian subsidiaries of foreign companies to donate to political parties

 and save the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) from imminent disqualification for having violated the ban on acceptance of foreign contributions. 

This was followed by an overhaul of the regulatory framework comprising the :

🌺Representation of the People Act (RPA), 

🌺the Companies Act,

🌺 the Income Tax Act and 

🌺 Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act through the Finance Act of 2017, despite strident protests from the RBI, the Election Commission of India (ECI) and Opposition parties. 

Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and PIL 

1 Months before the EBS was promulgated, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Common Cause

2 They filed a PIL to challenge the constitutionality of the amendments made in the legal framework of corporate donations by the Finance Act of 2017. 

3 The petition contended that these amendments infringed the citizen’s fundamental ‘Right to know’ under Article 19(1)(a), and were not saved by any of the permissible restrictions under Article 19(2).

 The vires of the amendment to FCRA effected through the Finance Act of 2016 were also impugned.

3 The gravamen of the petition was that the impugned amendments jeopardised the 

🌺country’s autonomy, 

🌺militated against transparency, 

🌺incentivised corrupt practices by lifting the caps on corporate donations and 

🌺allowing contributions by loss-making and shell companies.

याचिका का मुद्दा यह था कि आक्षेपित संशोधनों ने देश की स्वायत्तता को खतरे में डाल दिया, पारदर्शिता को नुकसान पहुँचाया, कॉर्पोरेट दान पर सीमा हटाकर भ्रष्ट आचरण को बढ़ावा दिया और घाटे में चल रही और शेल कंपनियों को योगदान की अनुमति दी।

4 Consequently, the nexus between politics and big business was rendered more opaque.

5  The instrument would enable special interest groups, corporate lobbyists and foreign entities to 

🌺secure a stranglehold on the electoral process 

🌺and influence the country’s governance to public detriment. 

6 this will end  ECI’s constitutional role and deprived citizens of vital information concerning electoral funding

7 इसके अलावा, प्रासंगिक कानूनों में संशोधन के लिए धन विधेयक का सहारा लेने से संविधान में परिकल्पित विधायी योजना को उलट दिया गया.

Bonds, the favoured mode

Over time, electoral bonds have become the favoured mode of political donation

1  Bonds worth ₹13,791 crore have been sold in 27 tranches until July 2023. 

2 The ADR’s research has shown 

that electoral bonds accounted for 

🌺55.9% of the donations totalling ₹9,188 crore received by 31 political parties.

🌺 Unsurprisingly, the BJP got the lion’s share of 74.5% of electoral bonds redeemed until 2020-2021. 

🌺The INC was second, at 11%, 

🌺followed by the Biju Janata Dal, the YSR Congress Party and the Trinamool Congress.

पॉलीटिकल पार्टी इस रुपए  का क्या करती हैं

1 It will be naive to believe that political parties depend on these inflows to meet their insatiable requirement of funds.

2  The expenditure on the last general election to the Lok Sabha has been estimated at between ₹55,000 to ₹60,000 crore. 

3  They spend

🌺infrastructure expansion, 

🌺equipment and 

🌺publicity in the print, electronic and digital media. 

4 This gives them an enormous advantage over their rivals in influencing voter behaviour.

सुप्रीम कोर्ट का क्या रख रहा है इस मामले में

1 The Supreme Court of India did not take kindly to the petitioners’ repeated pleas to stay the impugned scheme, pending determination of the weighty issues raised in their petition.

2  अंतरिम रोक की याचिका को खारिज करते हुए, शीर्ष अदालत ने 23 जून, 2021 के अपने आदेश में कहा कि एक मतदाता के लिए कॉरपोरेट फाइलिंग में बताए गए चुनावी बांड पर खर्च को संबंधित राजनीतिक दलों के लेखापरीक्षित खाते को रसीदों के साथ मिलान करके योजना की गोपनीयता के पर्दे को भेदना संभव है।  

3 but important thing is 

Even if a determined voter had the capacity to scrutinise the returns of the suspect corporates and political parties,

 it would be pointless since the scheme does not require the donors and recipients to furnish disaggregated information regarding their electoral bond transactions.

4 Significantly, the government has also stressed the imperative of protecting donor anonymity, ostensibly to shield them from retribution by political rivals.

5  The Solicitor General has argued that anonymity is central to their right to privacy, even though this fundamental right is not available to artificial legal persons. 

Over 94% of the electoral bond sales are in the denomination of one crore rupees — a sum beyond the capacity of individual donors.

 Moreover, particulars of individuals contributing ₹20,000 and above are duly disclosed in party accounts. Why must corporate donors receive greater protection?

The hope

The pendency of the PIL has been marked by rare interludes of activity and long stretches of somnolence. It is gratifying that the Constitution Bench, to which the crux of the PIL was referred, has expeditiously concluded the hearing

. Having regard to the strength of the case against the Scheme and the Supreme Court’s stellar record in expanding the scope of the right to freedom of speech and expression and empowering the voter to make an informed choice, one may hope that the next round of elections will be contested on a reasonably level-playing field.

Source the hindu