Electoral Bonds – Part 3 - Believers IAS Academy

Electoral Bonds – Part 3

#GS-02 Governance

Electoral Bonds are debt instruments which are purchased anonymously by donors to political parties.
Introduced with the Finance Bill, 2017, the Electoral Bond Scheme was notified on January 29, 2018.
They are valid for 15 days and the political parties can encash them.
State Bank of India is authorised to issue and encash these bonds.
The bonds are issued by SBI in denominations of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore.
One can purchase these bonds only digitally or through cheques.
The bonds can be purchased by any citizen of India for a period of ten days each in the months of January, April, July and October as may be specified by the Union Government.
The bonds are only redeemable in the designated account of a registered political party.
The Electoral Bond deposited by an eligible Political Party in its account is credited on the same day.

To be eligible to receive electoral bonds, a political party:
Must be a registered political party under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
Must have secured not less than 1% of the votes polled in the last general election to the Lok Sabha or the State Legislative Assembly.

The Bank of choice being a solely government owned bank makes it possible for the party in power to know the identity of the buyer of the bond.
While the bond scheme was brought in to bring transparency in to the electoral funding process, it has only in many ways made the process opaquer.
By hiding the identity of the donor, it makes it possible for vested interests to play a larger role in the country’s elections.
The new rules exempt the political parties from disclosing donations received through electoral bonds.
This has made it impossible for the citizenry to know from where and whom does these parties get their money supply.
This also means that they infringe upon the fundamental right to know under Article 19.