SC to hear petitions seeking stay on electoral bonds on April 2

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that it will hear on April 2 the petitions which have challenged the issuance of electoral bonds by the government. The matter came up for hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna.

The bench told advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for one of the petitioners, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an NGO, that the matter would be heard by an appropriate bench on April 2. "We will not be sitting in this combination. We will list the case before another bench next week," it said.

ADR recently filed an application in the apex court seeking stay on the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018 which was notified by the Centre in January last year. It said amendments carried out in relevant Acts have "opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate donations to political parties and anonymous financing by Indian as well as foreign companies which can have serious repercussions on the Indian democracy".

The application further said: "Electoral bonds are being made available for a large number of days in three months leading to general elections in the country scheduled to be held... in April-May 2019 to constitute the 17th Lok Sabha. "It is expected that enormous amount of corporate funding would be received by political parties in April and May and this would play a critical role in the elections."

Referring to research and data compiled on the issue, the NGO has said that close to 97 per cent of all the bonds purchased so far were in denomination of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore, with no demand for bonds of smaller denominations. "The fear with regard to electoral bonds has been proven right in light of the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party's annual audit report for 2017-18 according to which the ruling party received the largest chunk of the funds received through electoral bonds.

"BJP has earned more than Rs 1,000 crore in 2017-18 and is all set to be the maximum gainer of political funding in the last financial year, according to its annual returns submitted to the Election Commission," the application has alleged and also referred to media reports on this.

Meanwhile, suspect cash, illegal liquor and drugs worth about Rs 540 crore have been seized across the country since parliamentary election schedule was announced by the Election Commission a fortnight ago, official data showed Tuesday. Tamil Nadu recorded the maximum seizure of these illegal inducements, suspected to have been routed and used to bribe voters, worth Rs 107.24 crore, followed by Uttar Pradesh Rs 104.53 crore, Andhra Pradesh Rs 103.4 crore and Punjab Rs 92.8 crore.

Karnataka saw the total seizure of inducements and cash worth Rs 26.53 crore, Maharashtra Rs 19.11 crore and Telangana Rs 8.2 crore. An Election Commission official said the total value of seized items was Rs 539.99 crore.

The polls were declared by the Election Commission on March 10 and as per data updated till March 25, a total of Rs 143.37 crore suspect cash, Rs 89.64 crore worth of liquor, drugs valued at Rs 131.75 crore, gold and other precious metals worth Rs 162.93 crore and other freebies of Rs 12.20 crore have been seized, the EC data for all states for Lok Sabha polls said.

The EC has deployed hundreds of general observers, expenditure observers and static and mobile surveillance teams in the country to keep a check on flow of black money and other illegal gratification so that the level playing field of holding fair polls is not disturbed. The seven phase polls will begin from April 11 and the counting of votes will take place on May 23.