6 min readMar 16, 2024 10:03 AM IST
First published on: Mar 15, 2024 at 06:05 PM IST
8 pm of March 14, 2024, was somewhat reminiscent of 8 pm of November 8, 2016. It was a few minutes before 8 pm on Thursday, that the media frenzy began after the Election Commission of India (ECI) surprised the nation by putting the electoral bonds (EBs) data provided to it by the State Bank of India (SBI) under the orders of the Supreme Court of India (SC) 23 hours before the deadline of 5 pm on March 15. This newspaper captured the importance of the moment by putting its banner headline “Who paid the parties”.
Life after EBs will not be the same. True, the data revealed so far does not disclose exact one-on-one correspondence between the purchaser and redeemer of each particular EB. But suggestive stuff such as the four sectors that dominate the purchasers of EBs; and some purchases that might be linked temporally to raids by enforcement agencies (brought out by news portals even without the EB information being available but with much greater effort) are already available. So are nuggets of information such as the “Bond Buyer No.1” being a “Lottery King”.
One-on-one correspondence between the purchaser and redeemer of each particular EB can only be established once the unique alpha-numeric number, visible only under ultraviolet light, of each EB is available, as the SBI said during the court hearings. It may encourage some commentators to say “I told you so” but it needs to be remembered that it is the same SBI who said that they will be able to disclose what has been disclosed in three weeks now in roughly 25-28 hours.
While exact correspondence is certainly desirable and all constitutional efforts will be made to get the unique identifier numbers, a lot still needs to be done to make full use of the already available data. Just as one example: The available data is for 21 out of 30 phases. ECI has already filed an application to the SC to return it (to ECI) so it can be put up on the website. Most of the analysis done till the time of writing appears to be of the total for the 21 phases. Obviously, in-depth analysis of the data for each phase has the potential to reveal much more granular information on the linkages between the purchasers and the redeemers. The SC has issued a notice to the SBI to disclose the unique alpha-numeric numbers.
Be that as it may, some larger reflections are in order. These fall into two silos. The first relates to the oft-commented possible impact of this disclosure on the imminent Lok Sabha election. It needs to be remembered that the original petition by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR, of which the author is a founder-member), the judgment on which came on February 15, 2024, was filed in 2017 soon after EBs scheme was announced in the Parliament by the then Finance Minister. All that the petition asked for was that the EB scheme be declared unconstitutional along with all corresponding amendments to various laws.
The 2019 Lok Sabha election followed two years later and there was almost no mention of the petition during the run-up to, or during, that election. Since then, there have been only two substantial hearings, one on April 12, 2019, and the other on March 26, 2021, despite the filing of five applications for early hearing.
The SC, in its wisdom, decided to take up the petition in October 2023 end and delivered the judgment on February 15, 2024, after reserving it on November 01, 2023. As mentioned, the original petition requested only for the EB scheme to be declared unconstitutional. The SC did that but went ahead and also issued directions to SBI and ECI to ensure full implementation of the judgment. This initiative of the apex court must be acknowledged and commended. It has created this widespread interest in the judgment and its aftermath.
To reiterate, the intent of the original petition was not to directly or indirectly influence the result of any election. It was to bring transparency to the system of financing political activity in the country.
The second silo pertains to “what next”. In a very incisive article in this paper (‘No going back to square one’, IE, March 15) the “way forward” was discussed in detail. State funding of elections is mentioned briefly and rejected, and a national election fund is recommended. Without going into the merits of both, it is important to highlight one major concern with both options — there seems to be an unstated assumption: That political parties will not accept any other form of donations than what they receive either through state funding or from the national election fund. This assumption has not been tested but my expectation is that no political party will be willing to accept this requirement, and even if some of them do, it will be impossible to ensure this in practice.
I fully agree with and respect the sentiment expressed in the op-ed that “it is indispensable that we confront this issue (of corruption in politics) head-on”. The only way to confront it head-on is to legislate that all donations to political parties will be through digital means, with no exception whatsoever. After all, wasn’t this what all of us, citizens, were asked to do at 8 pm on November 8, 2016, when demonetisation was announced?
The writer is founder-member and trustee of Association for Democratic Reforms
One-on-one correspondence between the purchaser and redeemer of each particular electoral bond can only be established once the unique alpha-numeric number, visible only under ultraviolet light, of each EB is available, as the SBI said during the court hearings. (Express) 
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