Matching buyers of electoral bonds with recipients could be tricky, say activists –
The news today say that it’s going to be technically tricky to reveal exactly “who gave how much to which party” under the Electoral Bond Scheme which yesterday the Supreme Court of India declared as illegal and unconstitutional.
In other words, while the donee political party will be revealed forthwith the donor identity is going to take a lot more time to dig out and disclose.
Why ? Because all the Bonds were in the nature of nameless bearer bonds freely transferable without a trail since there was no due process of any kind of registration of transfers ; everything was deliberately designed to be as murky as possible … i.e (1) a bond could”ve been purchased by one entity on behalf of another entity or even several predecessor entities ( benami purchasers) (2) a bond after initial purchase could’ve have also changed hands amongst several other anonymous bearers who were out there in the public before it finally landed up in the hands of the political party which eventually encashed it.
The list of donors that SBI submits to SC on March 6th might after all be a list of ghost donors only …. The real donors will remain anonymous.
The political parties that encashed the bonds will shrug their collective shoulders and say “I cashed the Bond …. Don’t ask me who the bond purchaser is ..”
And SBI will say “I can only disclose the identity of the entity that purchased the bond at my counters in the first place . Thereafter , the transit destinations of the bond is unknown to me”.
By the time the identities of the transit intermediary bond holders/ transferors are unearthed by investigating agencies , the whole matter by then would be forgotten in the public mind-space as just another bureaucratic merry-go-around wild goose chase.
So , the bottom line is really this : No one can ever prove quid pro quo between a political party and a bond donor!
Everyone is going to be happy. All’s well that ends well! The political parties collectively pocketed ₹16.5 K crores ; the real donors will continue to remain anonymous; the quid pro quo gets duly transacted all under the radar that the public will get to know nothing about ; SBI will have done its duty; and the Supreme Court will gets laurels for having passed a historic landmark judgment.
And you and I as common citizens will be left watching this charade of justice delivery like arrant simpletons or fools .
Wool has been pulled over our eyes yet again by the conspiracy of the powerful in this land …
At the end of all this great Indian Tamashaa we will all — fools and wise alike — pat ourselves on our backs and each other and proudly proclaim the Supreme Court has indeed restored our confidence in our Democracy! …
I remember what Edgar Allen Poe once wrote : I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.
Sudarshan Madabushi