Electoral Bonds Case Hearing : Live Updates From Supreme Court [Day 3]

SG: The donor wants confidentiality. That's not for me to judge. That's for the law makers to judge. The law makers felt that this is the most incentivised way of black money generation and black money payment.

SG (to Sibal): You appear for a Congress person from Madhya Pradesh, therefore I'm saying.

Sibal: You are appearing for a government, you're not part of that party. So I'm also not a part of the Congress.

SG: The other party should not know - that's what the donor wants. I'll give an example which is comfortable to Mr Sibal- Suppose as a contractor I donate to Congress party, I don't want BJP to know...

Sibal: You've forgotten I'm not in the Congress party.

SG: Let that confidentiality remain completely except under the court order.

CJI: But Mr Solicitor, you know anyway who has donated what amount. The moment the Electoral Bond is tendered to a party by a constituent, the party knows it.

SG: If I want to disclose my identity, I can pay by cheque. I still have the option. I don't have to pay by Electoral Bonds.

SG: I have some solutions to offer so your lordships' concerns are addressed. You will see the bonafides of the government- we don't want to know who donated what amount to who

SG: The moment the question of disclosure of donor comes, the scheme fails- as it failed in trust. That is the disincentive. The reason why they wanna donate through cash is anonymity, confidentiality.

Justice Khanna: The idea behind the trust was that the trust may be of 5 or more than 5. Money would come in trust. Trust would give to parties. So noone knows which company has given money.

Justice Khanna: But in 2013, the ECI made it mandatory to disclose which company had directed to donate to which party. That's how the scheme failed.

Justice Khanna: In 1996, one big corporate group with over 100 companies had set up a trust.

SG: TATA, let us name

Justice Khanna: And the money from all the group companies would come into trust and they'd distribute to different parties.

SG Mehta: He is very careful to say "some element of transperancy".

Justice Khanna: I was going through some papers. There was an interesting discussion on how the trust scheme came into being.

SG Mehta: I was reading from an article written by the then Hon'ble Law Minister in response to some concerns raised. It was published in Press Information Bureau.