Nirmala Sitharaman says electoral bonds will be revived if BJP is elected to power in Lok Sabha elections 2024
HindustanTimes, she said, “We still have to do a lot of consultation with stakeholders and see what is it that we have to do to make or bring in a framework which will be acceptable to all, primarily retain the level of transparency and completely remove the possibility of black money entering into this." She did, however, added that the Union government has not yet decided whether to seek a review of the ruling made by the Supreme Court (SC). She added, “What the current scheme which has been just thrown out by the Supreme Court brought in was transparency.
What prevailed earlier was just free-for-all." While acknowledging that certain aspects of the scheme needed improvement, FM Sitharaman also mentioned that they might be brought back in some form following “a good consultation." This is not the first time the finance minister has defended the electoral bonds scheme. Earlier she said that scheme was “one step better than what went before".
During an interview with The New Indian Express, Sitharaman had said, the BJP regime brought the law “to clean up electoral financing". “Electoral funding will have to go through a lot more transparency." Meanwhile, the electoral bonds scheme was introduced by the central government on January 2, 2018 as an alternative to cash donations made to political parties to bring transparency in political funding.
In February 2024, the five-judge constitution bench declared the central government's electoral bond scheme as unconstitutional. Milestone Alert!
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