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The Election Commission of India (EC) has filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court (SC) saying that it had “received sealed covers” from different political parties about donations garnered through electoral bonds, replied Live Law.
In an interim order dated April 12, 2019, hearing a plea by the NGOs Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Common Cause, the SC had asked political parties which have received donations through electoral bonds to “forthwith” submit the details, including the identity of donors, amounts received, details of payments, bank accounts etc. to the EC.
The current affidavit filed by the EC contains a list of 105 national, state, state unit of national parties, state parties and registered unrecognized parties, who have filed the requisite details.
As per the EC affidavit, the national parties which have submitted the sealed cover details include the All India Trinamool Congress, BSP, BJP, Congress, CPI, CPM and the Nationalist Congress Party.
The Tripura State Unit of the BJP, the West Bengal unit of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Goa unit of the Congress apart from 20 state parties too have submitted covers. The affidavit also said that 71 unrecognised parties too have submitted covers of their donations.
The affidavit also gave a list of which party had submitted a list of its Audited Annual Accounts and which hadn’t.
In the affidavit the EC also stated that being a Constitutional Authority, it will not take any contentious issues or join any submission on merits in the matter, as such matters were between contending parties.
Electoral Bonds were introduced in 2017 wherein the identity of the donor would be kept anonymous and only known to the bank. The petitioners had alleged that the bonds were purposely kept ‘secretive’ so that the identity of the donors (mostly large corporate houses) would not be revealed. However, the Centre had taken a contrary reply stating that anonymity in political funding would “promote transparency in funding and donation received by political parties”.
In its April 2019 order, the SC had refused to stay the electoral bonds scheme citing that the decision couldn’t be based on a short hearing.
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