Electoral Reforms-a step ahead: Context Electoral Bond; Courtesy Supreme Court.

R.R.Prabhakar 

Electoral Reforms have never  been the product of the urge emanating from political parties.It is yet to become an electoral issue in any party manifesto. Even if it finds a place in the manifesto the objective is to escape the criticism of being insensitive to its importance;nothing beyond that. Even people do not seem to talk much about this important aspect that has the capacity to make democracy truly democratic. It can be safely said that reforms are mostly court driven when the latter is moved by way of writ application filed by a conscious individual or an organization constituted by the association of such individuals. Of course, the Election Commission of India(ECI) is keen to do all that is possible towards building a system that seeks to ensure a free and fair poll during elections. It also explores ways and means as to how to prevent system from being overpowered by unscrupulous and blatant use of money power. But what requires to be mentioned without mincing a word is that the level of co-operation from political parties are far from satisfactory. Rather, a new tendency has developed among the parties to malign the Commission itself by ways more than one. We should not disagree that a reform works best in an environment of consensus. But divergency of perception has made any reform in indian context a most difficult and complex decision of sorts by the ECI.

Be that as it may; it is a fact that present scenario where money power appears to be everything discourages a person of modest income to contest elections no matter how genuine and caring for the electorate he may be.
                  In this context it is also not difficult to imagine Black Money fuelling Elections. It is not unknown to us that how political parties without the slightest compunction receive donations from business houses and other wealthy individuals who amass properties by unscrupulous means and resort to donations of sorts in order to convert their black into white. This is euphemistically called political funding on which all major political parties thrive. It is my personal opinion that political parties woo common electorate but work latently in the interest of these business houses under the garb of their concern for the public and public policy. The reason is simple;by being funded lavishly by such donors the priorities and policy of all political parties stand compromised to cater to the latent demand/expectations of these donors. Can they ignore such powerful donors and their expectations backed by such donations? Non- disclosure of the identity of the donors is based on the principle of mutual benefits  for both the political parties and donors.
It is mentioned that prior to 2017 the political parties were not bound to disclose the source of the fund if the amount of donation by such donor was short of Rs. 20000. The effect was the misuse of this provision to its full.  To escape the provisions of disclosure of identity of such donors giving donations in excess of Rupees 20000 all parties maintained that the 90 percent of the donation amount was by people who donated less than Rs. 20000. For the sake of addressing this issue at one hand and attempting transparency in political funding on the other this threshold amount requiring such disclosure was reduced to Rs. 2000. This change was not to be welcome by any political party for obvious reasons of discomfort.
It was in this background as also the necessity of responding to the growing perception that flagrant election expenditure incurred by major political parties are fuelled by black money, the Finance Minister in his Budget address of 2017-18  announced issue of Bond what was called Electoral Bond.
As indicated earlier the Electoral Bond was proposed to be issued to achieve the objective of quantifying the non-cash donation amount received by a political party without letting the ECI and the general public to have any means to know about the identity of donors.
To explain electoral bond  all that can be said about this in bare outline is that it is just like any other bond that an individual or a company (local or foreign) can buy in denomination of Rs. 1000, 10000, 1lakh, and 1 Crore from the State Bank of India which keeps the identity of the purchaser confidential. The bond is available for sale for a period of 10 days in the month of January, April, July and October. The donor, either an individual or a local or foreign company, buys the bonds and transfer them to the account of a political party,where they are converted into donations.
Only political parties registered under section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and which secured not less than 1% of votes polled in the last general election to the House of People or the Legislative Assembly of the State are eligible to receive electoral bonds.
The electoral bonds are valid for only 15 days from the date of issue. No payment is to be made to any payee political party if the bond is deposited after expiry of the validity period. The bond deposited by an eligible political party is credited the same day.
The idea and argument on behalf of the
Government highlighting the need to keep confidential for various reasons the identity of the donor of political fund failed to convince the Apex Court which passed an interim order  directing all political parties to provide details of the amounts they have received and identities of the donors in a sealed cover to the ECI by May 30 in a move towards greater transparency in political funding. This interim order came in response to a petition filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms(ADR), a non-government research organization. The ADR claimed that electoral bonds promoted opacity in political funding by letting donors remain anonymous and therefore it prayed for a stay on the sale of these bonds.
The top court, while declining a stay, said the question of transparency required a detailed hearing to settle the issue finally.
We can thus conclude that all political Reforms are set in motion by Apex Court only; be it  introduction of EVM or NOTA or VVPAT etc. it is generally the Apex Court, not the political party which has to take the lead. It appears that reforms are thrust upon political parties not demanded by them. What a pleasure it would have been if the lead were taken by the political parties themselves without waiting for any Judicial verdict or parliamentary legislation! It appears that all issues of political Reforms ranging from criminal background of contestants to gender justification in distribution of tickets to reckless expenditure; to mention a few, lose their importance before a single factor "winnability". After all end is more important than the means! Is not it?
R.R.Prabhakar,
14.04.2019.