With electoral bonds decision, SC makes amends

• The decision of the Supreme Court on the electoral bonds scheme stands in stark contrast with a long series of judgments that appeared to go systematically in favour of the government at the Centre.

NJAC

• As early as July 2014, the government promoted a constitutional amendment in order to create a commission which would be responsible for appointing and transferring judicial officers
  • Which would consist of the CJI, two senior judges, the Minister of Law and Justice and two “eminent personalities
• These two personalities would have been selected by a committee comprising the CJI, the PM and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
• This bill was passed in Parliament, but the Supreme Court quashed it in 2015 because it would affect the independence of the judiciary, guaranteed, in its view, by the Collegium system.

Supreme court drop the ball in the favor of government

• However, the Supreme Court began to drop the ball with regard to its vigilance against the crossing of lines by the Executive.
• In 2017, the Court refused to examine a petition alleging dilution in the Whistleblower Protection Act
• in 2018 it validated the Aadhaar Act that the government had passed as a money bill — like the Electoral Bonds Bill
  • In spite of the fact that it fell well outside the limits set by the Constitution for money bills.
• In 2019, the Supreme Court judgment on the MLAs who had defected from Congress to BJP
  • Enabling the latter party to form the government in Karnataka in spite of its electoral defeat, made a mockery of the Anti-Defection Law.
• Similarly, the Court kicked the can down the road on the constitutional challenge to the abrogation of Article 370,
  • The splitting of the erstwhile state of J&K into two Union Territories, on reservation for economically weaker sections, judicial review of money bills, electoral bonds and the challenge to the Citizenship Amendment Act.

judicial evasion

• If what constitutional law scholar Gautam Bhatia has called “judicial evasion” remained the Supreme Court’s favourite strategy, when it did make decisions, none of them challenged the government.
• For instance, it dismissed the plea to transfer the PM CARES Fund, that had received large sums of money during the Covid-19 crisis to the National Disaster Relief Fund
  • And upheld the validity of the draconian Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), including the investigative powers of the Enforcement Directorate.
• The 10 per cent EWS quota was upheld, as was the legality of the government’s 2016 demonetisation move, and the abolition of Article 370 as well as the downgrading of J&K

Conclusion

• With the decision on electoral bonds, the court seems to have retrieved some of the ground it had steadily ceded to the Executive.