Supreme Court To Give Verdict On Electoral Bond Tomorrow

The Supreme Court of India. (File photo)

The Supreme Court will pronounce its verdict on a batch of petitions challenging the electoral bond scheme on Thursday. The verdict will be delivered by a 5-judge constitution bench, including the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud.

According to a LiveLaw report, the bench consisting of Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra had reserved the judgment in the matter on November 2 after hearing the matter for three days.

The petitioners in the case are the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and Dr Jaya Thakur, who challenged the amendments introduced by the Finance Act 2017 which paved the way for the electoral bonds scheme.

The petitioners argued that the anonymity in the electoral bonds affects the transparency of political funding and infringes on the voters’ right to information, which is sacrosanct in a democracy.

The Modi government, on the other hand, is defending the scheme calling it a method to ensure that ‘white’ money is used for political funding through proper banking channels.

The Government further argued that anonymity in these bonds was necessary to keep the identity of donors confidential so that they would not face any retribution from political parties.