PROFESSOR JAGDEEP CHHOKAR is former Director In-charge of Indian Institute of Management, (IIM) Ahmedabad and one of the founding members of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). In SC, ADR had filed petition in 2017 as soon as the Electoral Bond Scheme was announced. In an interview with MOHAMMAD NAUSHAD KHAN, he said SC judgement will prove a precedent in many cases in the future.
How would you like to respond to the Supreme Court judgment on Electoral Bonds?
The electoral bond judgement is very good for a number of reasons: First, it is a big step towards transparency in political financing which is absolutely necessary without which our democracy cannot remain a democracy. Secondly, the judgement has made two specific points. It is based on these two issues. One is the level playing field. A level playing field is violated, when according to the scheme the party in power has access to information which other parties don’t have. In free and fair elections, a level playing field is a necessary requirement for a democracy. If the rules of the game are not the same for all competitors, it cannot be a free and fair election and that is why this level playing field was a necessary condition for democracy.Therefore, the scheme has been shut down.
The second issue was the voters’ right to information about sources of funding for political parties. It is because a voter has a fundamental right to vote; in order to vote, a voter has to decide which party to vote for and to make that decision it was considered that a voter needs the information on where political parties get their money from. If the voter is forbidden from getting this information, voters’ fundamental right to information, which will enable her or him to vote, will be violated. So, on these two pillars, the judgement has declared this scheme unconstitutional and I think both these aspects are extremely important.
I would like to stress that this judgement also reinforces the right to information which was in a bit of a weak situation and therefore I think it was a good judgement. It has a lot of very significant observations which will be quoted in years to come and the judgement will be used as a precedent in many cases in the future.
What according to you are the key takeaway points from the disclosure made by SBI on electoral bonds?
The SBI apparently disclosed all and transferred the unique alphanumeric numbers toElection Commission on March 21. So once that is available, the whole thing will be quite clear.It would be possible to trace who bought a particular bond, a specific bond, and who encashed that specific bond. So there will be noone-on-one correspondence between the buyer of the bond and the redeemer of the bond and that would be a very useful thing to find out whether any decisions were taken for considerations other than national interest or people’s interest which is called quid pro quo. So, the quid pro quo should be available.
In what way do you think it is going to impact political parties and Lok Sabha polls2024?
Let me clarify this – and I think it is a very important point for me – that we did not file this petition to impact any election or to support or oppose any party.We filed this petition in 2017 as soon as the Electoral Bond Scheme was announced. It was notified in 2018, but we filed the petition in 2017 because we thought the scheme was against transparency in political funding. After we filed the petition there came the 2019 elections, nobody said there is a petition on electoral bond pending. It was not even talked about in that election. Then we filed five applications for early hearing every few months but the petition was not heard.
The Supreme Court in its wisdom decided to take it up for hearing in October 2023 and they reserved the judgement on November 2, 2023. They could have, after reserving the judgement on November 2 2023, announced the judgement in January 24 or December 23, or they could have even announced the judgement in June 24. We had no say; they chose to announce the judgement on 15th February, 2024 and this happens to be very close to the election.
Also, I want to make it clear that we, in our petition, had asked for the Electoral Bond Scheme to be declared unconstitutional. Regarding discloser of information on electoral bonds from SBI, the Supreme Court has done on its own initiative. We did not ask for this, we are very happy that the Supreme Court did it and we really appreciate this initiative of the court. With this data coming out and this being so close to the election, now a connection is being made between the judgement and the election which was not intended. I don’t know what impact it would have on the election because all parties are involved except the two communist parties. CPM also filed a petition against it. All parties are involved to varying degrees. There are some regional parties who have also got significant amounts of money but the ruling party at the center has got more than 50 percent. There is disturbing information.To what extent that information will percolate to voters in a way that it should, for it to have an impact on the election, I do not know.
Let’s not forget, it has been said that if we compute the amount of money per MP then it presents a very different picture. The judgement is being used by all political parties for their advantage and for putting the other parties at disadvantage. It has become a political football whereas the intention was to make political funding transparent and make democracy better. So, what action the political parties are taking today, post the judgement, will they make democracy better, I don’t know. But I think there is a lot of information and it will be analysed overtime, nothing will happen in a few days.
I also feel that this analysis and investigation will not be done by official agencies because official agencies work under the government and the government works under political parties. So, I really believe, let us say in this election the political party in power changes even then there might not be proper investigation because whichever party comes to power will also have something to hide. So, the investigation into this wealth of data will have to be done by the people. But because people are kind of diffused and they can’t do it, I think an Independent Investigating Team which will consist of people who are not involved with any investigating agency or with any government agency, will be required.We will have to find responsible, competent people who are outside the pale of influence of any political party, and it is not going to be easy.
So, is it in a way forward towards major political reform and will it discourage political corruption?
Major political reform it will be, because it seems to have had such a large impact on a lot of people. The issue of political power and governmental power being influenced by big money is now clear and there is no doubt about that big money plays a big role in how governments make decisions.Governments of all parties whether in the centre or in the states are prone to this, that much is now established and nobody can question that.
Now what will that lead to remains to be seen and that will be a social churning. I hope people will demand that political parties and businesses to be more transparent. The revealing of information has exposed the corporate or the business-politics nexus. It is very clear that a big business has bigger influence and if big business can control the actions of the government then what do people who do not have money do?They become silent observers or sufferers. So, it will be the smaller people who do not have money, who do not have influence, will now have to act realising that they are not completely powerless.
So, as a petitioner, are you completely satisfied with the developments related to electoral bonds?
I am completely satisfied with the judgement but judgments have to be implemented in the right spirit.Let me say, we got the judgments against criminalization in 2002 and 2003. But even after that the number of people with criminal backgrounds in the parliament from 25 percent in 2004 increased to 43 percent in 2019. The judgement was very good but its impact on the ground is very different. A well-known retired Supreme Court judge keeps saying that the surgery was successful but the patient is dead. That should not happen in this case. The surgery seems to have been successful but we have to keep the patient alive and that is our job to keep the democracy alive.