The Indian National Congress on Thursday welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court where it pronounced that the electoral bond scheme violates Right to Information and Freedom of Speech and that it is unconstitutional.
In a post on social media platform X, Mallikarjun Kharge, President of INC tweeted welcomed the decision of the Supreme Court, which has struck down the ‘Black Money Conversion’ scheme of the Modi Government calling it “Unconstitutional”.
“On the day of the launching of Electoral Bonds scheme the Congress party had called it opaque and undemocratic. Subsequently in its 2019 Manifesto Congress Party promised to scrap Modi Govt’s dubious scheme. We remember how the Modi Govt, PMO and FM bulldozed every institution – RBI, Election Commission, Parliament and Opposition to fill BJP’s coffers. No wonder, 95% of the funding under this scheme was received by BJP. We hope that Modi Govt will stop resorting to such mischievous ideas in future and listens to the Supreme Court, so that Democracy, Transparency and level-playing field persists,” tweeted Kharge.
Welcoming the judgement, a statement issued by Pawan Khera, Chairman, Media & Publicity Department, All India Congress Committee, mentioned that the Indian National Congress has been fighting this battle for the last seven years both within Parliament and outside. “Today, we stand vindicated,” said Khera.
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In 2017, when the Electoral Bonds Scheme was first announced as part of the Finance Bill, Khera claimed that the Indian National Congress was the first political party to condemn, in clear and unequivocal terms, the opaque, undemocratic and harmful nature of the instrument so proposed.
Further, on January 2, 2018, when the Scheme was notified by the Modi Government, the INC called a press conference and highlighted three crucial concerns: Electoral bonds would become the most significant enabler of what are known as quid-pro-quo deals; with the removal of the cap on political funding from corporates Electoral Bonds would allow for dubious funding to thrive; and the argument of anonymity was deliberately designed to mislead.
According to Khera, the Electoral Bonds were a wilful tool of concealment, of absolute exoneration from political accountability. “That was their only purpose and all the intellectualisations offered at the time have failed to withstand judicial scrutiny. For a Party which made the purging of ‘Black Money’ a key jumla of its electoral campaigns, it created a system that removed all accountability from the system, allowed black money a cloak to conceal itself with, while at the same time charging the citizens of this country to run it,” claimed Khera.
The statement further mentioned that it looked forward to the SBI disclosing all the details of political funding received by all political parties and the ECI publishing the same in compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions.
“With over 95% of all funding having flowed to just one single party through this route since it was introduced, the question that arises is; will the Modi Government comply or will it issue another ordinance to try and circumvent the directions of the Supreme Court?” questioned Khera.
Expressing gratitude to the Supreme Court of India, Khera mentioned, “We, as a nation, stand strengthened and encouraged.”
