Big step in ensuring transparency in political funding: Yechury on electoral bonds issue

New Delhi: Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Monday welcomed the Supreme Court's decision to reject a plea by SBI to extend the deadline for furnishing the details of electoral bonds and said it was a major step towards ensuring transparency in electoral funding.

Speaking to reporters after the Supreme Court ordered SBI to disclose the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission by the close of business hours on March 12, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said it is an important step towards stopping the "legalisation of corruption".

"This SC judgment is a big step forward in ensuring transparency in political funding and particularly electoral funding. That transparency should have never been violated in the first place," he said.

The top court directed the Election Commission to publish the details shared by the State Bank of India on its official website by 5 pm on March 15.

"This we think is a very big step forward in the direction of ensuring transparency and very good for the health of India's democracy and electoral process," Yechury said.

The CPI(M) leader also said, "This is also important to ensure or establish what the Supreme Court in its earlier judgment has said that there are possibilities of a quid-pro-quo in receiving this fund and giving something in return to those who have contributed through the electoral bond, that is the deal-making that has been done." "That is what we call legalisation of political corruption," he said, adding that the Electoral Bond scheme introduced by the Narendra Modi government was an "instrument for legalisation of political corruption".

That it has now been put to an end is a very positive contribution towards enhancing transparency," Yechury said.

He said while the Supreme Court did not take up a contempt petition filed by the CPI(M) against SBI for seeking an extension, "I am sure our contempt petition will also be considered by the Supreme Court if SBI does not meet the deadline".

The decision will have a good impact on the INDIA bloc, he asserted.

"It only confirms that the corrupt methods through which they (BJP) had legally amassed funds are being used for giving deals to favourite corporates and browbeating the opposition by indulging in mega horse-trading and ensuring that the democratic will of people are negated," Yechury said.

Parties losing elections end up forming government and "all this was done through such funding", he added.

In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, a five-judge Constitution bench had scrapped the Centre's electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it "unconstitutional" and ordered disclosure by the EC of donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients by March 13.

Ordering the closure of the scheme, the top court directed the SBI, the authorised financial institution under the scheme, to submit by March 6 the details of the electoral bonds purchased since April 12, 2019, to date to the Election Commission.

The SBI had sought an extension till June 30 to disclose the details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties before the scheme was scrapped. However, the Supreme Court trashed its plea and ordered it to disclose the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission by close of business hours on March 12.

It also put the SBI on notice that the apex court may be inclined to proceed against it for "wilful disobedience" of its February 15 verdict if the bank failed to comply with its directions and timelines.