- By Abhishek Sheoran
- Mon, 22 Jul 2024 08:58 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
The Supreme Court will today hear a batch of petitions seeking an SIT probe into the donations received by political parties from the corporate sector through electoral bonds. Notably, the top court had in February cancelled the electoral bond scheme. Besides, it had halted the issuance of electoral bonds by the SBI with immediate effect.
Under the scheme, there was a provision to make donations to political parties while maintaining anonymity.
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The bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala, and Justice Manoj Mishra took note of the arguments made by lawyer Prashant Bhushan and stated that the public interest petitions filed by two non-governmental organizations-- Common Cause and the Center for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL)-- had been listed for hearing.
The PILs filed by the two NGOs allege a 'quid pro quo' between political parties, corporations, and investigative agencies, suggesting an arranged exchange of services or favours among the parties involved. They have labelled the scheme a 'scam' and demanded an investigation into the funding sources of the "shell companies and loss-making companies that made donations to various political parties."
On February 15, 2024, the apex court, in a unanimous judgement scrapped the electoral bond scheme, asserting that it was ‘unconstitutional’. The data regarding the donations, provided by the authorised institution for the scheme, the State Bank of India, was subsequently made public on the Election Commission's website following the Supreme Court's judgment.
This created furore across the political spectrum as many corporate houses were found to have made whopping donations to the political parties even as they were not making any profits.
The scheme was introduced in 2017 by the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Finance Bill.