CPI(ML) Liberation welcomes the much awaited verdict of the Supreme Court striking down the BJP Government's Electoral Bond Scheme as Unconstitutional. Electoral Bonds have been patently anti-democratic and unconstitutional. Hope the Supreme Court now gets the Election Commission to bring to the public domain the details of the corporate funding that has taken place through the unconstitutional Electoral Bonds scheme and retrospectively remove the screen of anonymity from the nexus between corporate power and the BJP, the biggest beneficiary of this unconstitutional scheme. Electoral Bonds, instead of letting the Indian voting public know who is donating how much to which party, allows individuals and companies (both Indian and foreign) to anonymously donate unlimited sums of money to political parties. In other words, Electoral Bonds prevent Indian citizens from knowing the identity of donors and details of donations – and thus it provides cover for cronyism and corruption. Since 2017, the BJP has received the majority of all political donations made through the Electoral Bonds, making it the main beneficiary of the scheme. To ensure this, Modi regime even overruled RBI’s and the Election Commission’s warnings that Electoral Bonds would fuel black money and electoral corruption. The Electoral Bonds have been a brazen instrument of massive electoral corruption, constitutional subversion and erosion of democracy. The regime that inflicted this unconstitutional scheme must now be punished by the people. India must now vote out the regime funded by dubious corporate-backed Electoral Bonds in the forthcoming 2024 elections.
