Kapil Sibal interview: ‘Govt cannot set aside electoral bonds judgment with an Ordinance … No law can set aside an SC verdict’

Senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal who led the argument for the petitioners in the Supreme Court case against the electoral bond scheme lays down the notable aspects of the judgment that struck down the scheme, why he thinks it is a scam, and if the Opposition should now make this its main election issue.

It is a historic verdict. It tries to restore the concept of free and fair elections, which is the basic structure of the Constitution. It tries to bring about transparency in the electoral system, tries to bring about accountability, sets aside all the amendments that had been made by my late friend Arun Jaitley that were intended only to aggrandise the political party in power at the Centre, which is the BJP. In many senses, this is perhaps one of the most historic decisions this court has rendered.

The first thing is they have held that the Right to Information under Article 19(1)(a) is fundamental to democracy. Relying upon the KS Puttaswamy and the other judgments, the Supreme Court has said a citizen has the right to know who contributed how much money to the political party in power. When you are contributing this kind of money through these bonds … obviously, the contributions are huge and there could be an element of quid pro quo and therefore the citizen has a right to at least have that information. So, in a sense, it is taking forward the concept underlying Article 19(1)(a), which is the right to information in the electrical process to ensure that there is a level playing field.

The second is that the amendments protected the political party and the donors from income tax. It also protected the political party from disclosing or allowed the political party not to disclose the funding it had