The finance ministry has launched its quarterly window for sale of electoral bonds to political parties from April 1 to 10, after the Supreme Court refused to stay the scheme last week. During the hearing, the apex court, however, flagged a new issue — the possibility of misuse of money received by political parties for activities like funding terror or violent protests — and asked the Centre whether it has any control on the end use. I wish the Court had mentioned another important and new area of dubious expenditure — buying of MLAs after the elections to overturn the public mandate.
The bench was hearing a plea by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) seeking a stay on fresh sale of bonds, while its petition challenging the electoral bonds scheme is pending.
The issue has been hanging fire since February 2017 when, in his budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made two profound statements: One, without transparency of political funding, free and fair elections are not possible, and two, that despite 70 years of concern we have failed to achieve the transparency required. After these momentous
— source indianexpress.com | S Y Quraishi | April 8, 2021