In 2018, a year before India’s last national election, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) introduced the so-called electoral bond system. It is a financial product that can be purchased and donated by individuals or businesses for a fixed amount through the State Bank of India. Anonymously providing campaign funds to political parties. Previously, individuals and corporations were required to make public donations above a certain amount.
In 2018, a year before India’s last national election, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) introduced the so-called electoral bond system. It is a financial product that can be purchased and donated by individuals or businesses for a fixed amount through the State Bank of India. Anonymously providing campaign funds to political parties. Previously, individuals and corporations were required to make public donations above a certain amount.
At the time, the Bharatiya Janata Party government said the bond system would allow both citizens and businesses to use “clean money” to help finance the electoral process. Indian elections have become prohibitively expensive due to the size of the country, the scale of campaigning, and the increasing reliance on digital means to promote party platforms. India’s 2019 election spending was over $8 billion. This year’s election, which begins on April 19 and runs for six weeks, could cost more than $14.4 billion, about the same amount as the 2020 U.S. election.
Election financing in India will look different in the future. In a landmark judgment in February, India’s Supreme Court reviewed and unanimously struck down the electoral bond scheme on the grounds that it violated Indian citizens’ right to information, and the State Bank of India ordered a moratorium on further bond issuance. commanded. Petitioners including the Association for Democratic Reforms and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), represented by prominent activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan, filed suit against the government.
This decision was surprising for several reasons. This showed that India’s Supreme Court still retains some degree of independence, despite mounting criticism for its apparent tendency to cajole towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. It also reveals how much prominent conglomerates chose to fund the Bharatiya Janata Party through bond schemes, with many companies that invested in bonds facing scrutiny from federal and state law enforcement agencies. It also became clear that
Although the Supreme Court’s ruling was likely too late to influence this year’s elections, much of the money from the bonds has already been spent, and the end of the electoral bond system could help clean up India’s campaign finance process. There is a possibility of contributing. Nevertheless, with voting currently underway, two key questions remain. Assuming the BJP returns to power as expected, will the government reinstate the electoral bond scheme with some transparency? And more broadly, will India’s Supreme Court maintain the independence it demonstrated in this case?
Initially, the Supreme Court’s ruling appeared to be a setback for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the largest recipient of electoral bonds, which lost access to some of the funds on the eve of elections. After the verdict, the court went on to ask the State Bank of India to make public information about details of donors and the unique alphanumeric codes linking these donors to beneficiaries. The data ultimately revealed that the top 10 donors of the BJP contributed as much as 35 per cent of the total intake of campaign funds. While there is little doubt that the Supreme Court deserves praise for its decision, it is worth noting that the late timing of the decision meant it had little or no substantive impact on this year’s election campaigns.
However, subsequent court-ordered disclosures revealed the opacity of the electoral bond system. The bond purchases by a number of prominent conglomerates suggest an opaque effort to win support from both the national Bharatiya Janata Party and state-level regional parties. Some of the companies facing possible investigations into their financial practices are major financiers and may have sought to avoid further scrutiny under the Bharatiya Janata Party government, which has weaponized India’s investigative agencies. It suggests that there is. Opposition parties, political dissidents, and private businesses alike have found themselves under the scrutiny of national tax authorities.
The significance of this ruling extends beyond campaign finance and this year’s elections. This gives hope to many activists in India who are concerned about the independence of India’s Supreme Court. Historically, the Supreme Court was known for its strict autonomy. The system also includes controversial provisions such as sweeping public interest litigation provisions that allow any Indian citizen to file a handwritten letter in court on behalf of the public interest, even in cases in which they are not directly involved. It also became known for its innovative judicial reforms. The Supreme Court had the right to intervene in appropriate cases, as in the electoral bond case.
Still, India’s Supreme Court has lost some of its luster in recent years. In 2020, former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, who was widely seen as sympathetic to Modi’s first Bharatiya Janata Party government, was appointed to the upper house of India’s parliament shortly after retiring from the bench. This unusual appointment raised serious questions about the court’s independence. Former Supreme Court Justice S. Abdul Nazir, who last year ruled on a case over the land on which the controversial Ram temple currently stands, has been appointed governor of India’s Andhra Pradesh state.
The current Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, took office in 2022. Legal experts have interpreted some of the decisions he oversaw as questionable. First, the court upheld the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which had long granted special autonomy to the Muslim-majority Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir region. This, coupled with an earlier court ruling allowing construction of the Ram Mandir to proceed on the site of the demolished Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, left many of India’s 200 million Muslims stranded. Both decisions were based on dubious legal premises and strengthened the Bharatiya Janata Party’s nationalist project.
And last October, the Supreme Court rejected a petition to license same-sex marriage in India, succumbing to the government’s appeal to set up a committee to consider giving rights to same-sex couples instead. . But once again, this decision disappointed many Indians and showed deference to the social sentiments of the conservative government. This decision played into the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which strengthened what it considered traditional Hindu values under attack from liberal modern concepts.
Given its recent track record of siding with the Bharatiya Janata Party government on politically sensitive issues, the Supreme Court’s decision on the electoral bond system leaves legal experts open to speculation about the Supreme Court’s motives. However, it has important implications. Although a single decision that undermines the ruling party will not immediately restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s independence, the Court’s willingness to figure out this nettle on the eve of a national election is a sign that it still cherishes. Judicial autonomy suggests that there may be a willingness to fight for democratic principles.
It is also important to pay attention to other important rulings in the future. The court will, among other things, decide on the politically fractious situation at Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi. The powers of the Enforcement Directorate, the main financial crimes investigation agency. and religious freedom for women. If the current Bharatiya Janata Party government returns to power as expected, preserving the Supreme Court’s autonomy will go a long way in preventing arbitrary exercise of power that could occur during Prime Minister Modi’s third term. It will be important.
