Electoral Bonds Case Hearing : Live Updates From Supreme Court [Day 2]

CJI: The problem of the scheme is if it doesn't provide a level playing field to political parties and if it suffers from opacity as the argument for the other side is. This is not to prevent the legislature from coming out with a scheme which deals with these deficiencies.

CJI: We are not saying what the scheme should be. Maybe the earlier scheme failed. Maybe it didn't get you as much white money into the electoral funding as you otherwise would have liked but look at the safeguards in earlier provisions.

CJI: Second, your argument that look if you strike down the scheme, you'll go to a situation which existed prior- that cannot be valid for the reason that we're not precluding the government from coming out with a transperant scheme or a scheme with level playing field.

CJI: The purpose of ensuring that electoral funding relies less and less on cash component and more and more on accountable component is work in progress. We're with you on that.

CJI: It's selective anonymity.

SG: A possible or potential abuse may not perhaps be the ground but let me explain the scheme.

CJI: What will really happen is this- a large donor will never put his/her head on the line by being in the books of account of the SBI having purchased...

SG: They're doing it.

CJI: All that the large donor has to do is to disaggregate the donation, get people who will purchase electoral bonds with small amounts which will be then purchased by official banking channels, not through cash.

SG: I will have to find out ten people having ten crores and who are ready to risk themselves.

CJI: The problem with the scheme is that it provides with selective anonymity. It's not completely anonymous. It's not confidential qua the SBI. It's not confidential qua the law enforcement agency. So a large donor would never take the risk of buying the EB.

SG Mehta: In my business I get only clean money. Practically requires I pay for political contributions. And practicality requires that I do so anonymously so I'm not victimised. So my clean money is converted into black money to pay them. And that's disastrous for economy.

SG Mehta: If I gave to Party 'A' and Party 'B' formed the government, I'd be facing victimization and retribution and vice versa. So the safest course was to pay by cash. So none of the parties would know which party I paid to and I'd be safe.

SG Mehta: Suppose a state is going on election. There are two parties which go neck to neck. Suppose I'm a contractor and I'm supposed to give my political contributions. The fear was if I give by way of clean money, it would be easily identifiable.

SG Mehta: The bottom-line is this- what is the reason that a person who contributes to a party chooses the mode of unclean money as payment mode?