On Wednesday, Attorney General KK Venugopal spent a long time arguing about the menace of black money in Indian politics, relying on a report he claimed to have been published by the ‘Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’ on how black money was central to political funding. During that first hearing, Venugopal tried to justify the anonymity of the bonds on the basis that donors were more willing to donate in clean money if they knew that they would not face any reprisals from the political party in power – this was also why other laws like the Companies Act also had to be amended.

On Thursday Attorney General Venugopal submitted details of the scheme published by the government to explain how secrecy is maintained. He described the security features of the electoral bonds including the unique reference number that can be viewed under UV light, which he claimed was only looked at to verify if a bond is genuine. He elaborated on how the scheme is part of a larger policy to tackle black money, pointing to recent reports of cash being seized in large quantities (from people connected to Opposition parties) as proof that the scheme is helping squeeze black money out of the system. After this, however, he made a number of more controversial arguments: He said there is a “sinister purpose” behind the petitions challenging the scheme, during the hearing on Thursday. He said that the petitioners’ claim that 95 percent of the electoral bonds have gone to the BJP indicated the petitions were motivated – he had previously insinuated that Prashant Bhushan was representing the Congress. He said that contrary to what the petitioners were arguing, “Voters don’t need to know where money of political parties comes from, as long as it is legitimate money.” The voter’s right to information about political candidates (including their funding) is a crucial argument of the petitioners because they claims this comes under exercise of free speech, based on previous decisions of the Supreme Court. He also said that the government was entitled to conduct this experiment at least till the elections are over, since the electoral bonds scheme is “not worse off than what is existing.” He also tried to say that the anonymity and lack of disclosure requirements was in furtherance of the donors’ right to privacy as upheld by the Supreme Court itself.

‘Voters Don’t Need to Know Source of Party Funding’: Attorney General KK Venugopal to SC on Electoral Bonds

Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said the Supreme Court will pronounce its order on whether to stay the electoral bonds scheme on Friday, 12 April, at 10:30 am. This decision will be an interim order, and not a final decision on the constitutionality of the electoral bonds scheme.

Fingers crossed for tomorrow. From the perspective of maintaining the core essentials of democracy, the electoral bonds case is perhaps the most important matter to come before the SC in recent times, after Aadhaar. https://t.co/xlVWZbMVlw
— Gautam Bhatia (@gautambhatia88) April 11, 2019

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Topics: Supreme Court Election Comission Attorney General

Published: 11 Apr 2019, 2:49 PM IST

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‘Voters Don’t Need to Know Source of Party Funding’: Govt to SC

Govt asked court not to interfere till end of polls, claimed voters don’t need to know source of political funding.

Read Latest News and Breaking News at The Quint, browse for more from news and law

Topics: Supreme Court Election Comission Attorney General