The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the electoral bonds scheme and called it unconstitutional. A five-judge constitutional bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud held that the scheme violates the Right to Information and Article (19)(1)(a).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The apex court delivered a unanimous verdict on a batch of pleas challenging the legality of the Centre\u2019s electoral bonds scheme, allowing anonymous funding to political parties. The court directed the authorised bank to cease issuing electoral bonds with immediate effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stating that information about the funding of political parties is essential for electoral choices, the apex court noted that the political parties are relevant units in the electoral process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The SC further noted that the central government\u2019s justification of monitoring black money through electoral bonds is not justified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The petitioners have not only challenged the constitutionality of the electoral bonds scheme but also asked the court to declare all political parties as public offices. This would bring them under the ambit of the Right to Information Act and compel them to disclose their income and expenditure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the hearing, the Supreme Court emphasised the importance of reducing cash transactions involved in the electoral process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The five-judge bench, consisting of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices Sanjeev Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, had reserved their verdict on this matter on November 2 last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The electoral bonds scheme was first announced in the 2017 Union Budget speech and then the scheme was notified by the government in January 2018. With a motive to bring transparency in political funding, the electoral bonds scheme was pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The apex court, in 2019, had declined to stay the scheme and made it clear that it would accord an in-depth hearing on the four petitions, including those filed by Congress leader Jaya Thakur, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The apex court, had on October 31 last year, commenced hearing on the four petitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A five-judge constitutional bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud held that the scheme violates the Right to Information and Article (19)(1)(a).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":501958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Supreme Court strikes down electoral bonds scheme, says unconstitutional","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,125714],"tags":[70107,320,162003],"yst_prominent_words":[],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2024\/02\/15115849\/screenshot2023-12-11112321-1702274085.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501955"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=501955"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=501955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}