Electoral bond verdict: How can India clean up political funding? Here’s what experts say

On February 15, in a unanimous verdict, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court annulled the electoral bonds scheme, which political experts, activists, and politicians alike hailed as momentous for Indian democracy. The apex court said it violates the Constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression as well as the right to information.

Now that electoral bonds are a thing of the past, the immediate question that arises is, what next? How will India clean up the murky electoral funding business? What will political parties, which were pocketing thousands of crores through anonymous funding, do now, especially since the elections are imminent? Can they continue to receive funding from corporate and individual donors and yet keep their noses clean?

Here is what several experts have offered in different media outlets.

Public funding

Writing for the Economic Times, Anjana Menon says that India needs “a publicly funded model of campaign finance that’s transparent, ending donors’ pay-to-play and funding terror model”.

Elaborating on the point, she has written that publicly funded elections, with legislative oversight, could be one way out, which many countries, especially the Nordic ones have already adopted.

“Funds should be handed to parties depending on a points system”, based on a look at its previous wins, development factors, personal records of candidates, and the constituency size, she argues.

“The aim should be to weed out unscrupulous elements, or snollygosters and encourage new blood in politics,” she writes.

Back to pre-2018 route

Subhash Chandra Garg, writing for The Indian Express, says corporates and political parties are most likely to “fall back upon the pre-2018 route of splitting the funding into cash donations of less than Rs 20,000 per donation. Or, they may resort to making completely unaccounted political donations.” According to the apex court ruling, only profitable corporates can make political donations of up to 7.5 per cent of their profits. Garg has pointed out that “though this route was always available, it was seldom used” and it is “unlikely to be used going forward as well”.

He has summed up the situation saying it is a “triumph of idealism over pragmatism”.

A National Election Fund?

Former Chief Election Commissioner of India SY Quraishi has hailed the judgment in his opinion piece for The Indian Express, saying the Supreme Court has lived up to its role “as the guardian angel of our democracy”.

Looking at the available options to “cleanse electoral funding”, he has also said that one option is to “eliminate private funding altogether and introduce public funding for political parties”.

He has also suggested establishing a “National Election Fund to which all donors could contribute”. The accumulated funds could be distributed among parties based on their electoral performance.

Need for database

Writing for The Times of India, Chakshu Roy mentions that “regulating electoral finance requires rethinking on two broad fronts”. First, there should be transparency in the donations parties receive. Now that the apex court has struck down the very “opaque” electoral bonds scheme, there is an “opportunity to develop a living database of political contributions”. Such a database “will bring transparency regarding a party’s support and lead to better-informed electorate”.

Roy has also shone light on the need to strengthen the ECI with more resources to free it of political pressure and state interference and to charge its expenditure to the consolidated fund of India, bringing it on a par with the SC, the CAG, and the UPSC.

Also read The Federal opinion pieces

Writing for The Federal, TK Arun has highlighted the need to incorporate electoral reforms by taking a leaf out of the books of the US and the UK.

Arvind Narrain, on the other hand, has elaborated on the SC’s delicate balancing act while analysing the two competing rights — that to privacy and that to know.