Electoral bond case referred to 5-judge Constitution Bench
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday referred to a five-judge Constitution bench a batch of pleas challenging the validity of the electoral bond scheme for political funding of parties.
In an unexpected turn of events on Monday in the long-pending and widely watched case, a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said they have received an application that the matter being urgent be sent to a larger bench for a conclusive judgement.
A plea to hear and decide the case before the Lok Sabha election in 2024, and before the bond issue for the election was made by Senior Advocate and activist Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the NGO, Association for Democratic Rights (ADR). The case has been awaiting hearing for the past several years.
The bench said the matter will be taken up on October 30, the date of hearing fixed earlier.
There are four PILs pending on the issue. One of the PIL petitioners had said in March that so far Rs 12,000 crore has been paid to political parties through electoral bonds and the two-third of the amount has gone to one major political party.
Electoral bonds have been pitched as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties as part of efforts to bring in transparency in political funding.
But the focus of the petitions has been the legislation of anonymous donations implying denial of right to information of the citizen regarding funding of political parties.
A related issue whether the passage of the bonds scheme as a Money Bill is in order, may not be taken up by the court in conjunction with this case. The court may prefer to wait till a seven-judge bench goes into it in-depth and decide when a bill could be designated a Money Bill. However, this decision will have ramifications for the electoral bond case, since the scheme was passed through a Money Bill without it passing through the Rajya Sabha.
(With inputs from PTI)