BREAKING : Supreme Court To Pronounce Order On Plea To Stay Electoral Bonds Tomorrow

The Supreme Court will pronounce its order tomorrow on an application seeking stay of the release of the fresh set of electoral bonds from April 1 for the assembly polls in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry.

A bench comprising Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramaniam had reserved order on the application filed by NGO 'Association for Democratic Reforms' on Wednesday.

The bench heard the arguments of Advocate Prashant Bhushan for the petitioner, Attorney General for India KK Venugopal, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi for the Election Commission of India.

Notably, the Election Commission of India opposed stay of electoral bonds. The ECI said they are not opposed to electoral bonds, but want more transparency. But Electoral Bonds is one step ahead unaccounted cash system, ECI said. The issue of transparency can be considered at the final argument stage, and there should be no interim stay, the ECI's counsel Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi told the SC.

Prashan Bhushan argued that the anonymous electoral bonds was a scheme to facilitate money laundering and funding by shell companies, and thereby undermined transparency in political funding. Bhushan placed heavy reliance on the concerns expressed by the ECI and the Reserve Bank of India regarding the anonymity of the bonds.

The Attorney General submitted that the bonds ensured that political funding was completely routed through banking channel, thereby eliminating black money.