Five holdings and the voter's right to know
Published 5 October 2026
The holdings are in Part H. The Court held that the Electoral Bond Scheme, the proviso to Section 29C(1) of the RPA (Finance Act section 137), Section 182(3) of the Companies Act (section 154) and Section 13A(b) of the Income Tax Act (section 11) are violative of Article 19(1)(a) and unconstitutional. It held that deleting the proviso to Section 182(1) of the Companies Act, which had capped corporate giving, is "arbitrary and violative of Article 14". Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The Court dealt with the 2019 interim order. The ECI's counsel, Amit Sharma, had told the Court that the ECI collected only 2019 data, reading para 14 of that order as a limit. The Court said para 14 set only a timeline for the 2019 window and that para 13 was "unequivocal", so the ECI "must have collected particulars" for all bonds. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The directions are. The issuing bank "shall herewith stop the issuance of Electoral Bonds". The SBI was to give the ECI details of bonds bought since April 12, 2019 (date, buyer name and denomination) and details of encashments by parties (date and denomination), by Wednesday, March 6, 2024. The ECI was to publish them on its website by Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Unencashed bonds still within the 15-day window were to be returned and refunded to the purchaser. The Court disposed of the petitions; the judgment is signed Thursday, February 15, 2024. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The standard of review. The Union had asked for judicial restraint, saying the amendments were economic policy. The Court answered that courts do not rely on "the ipse dixit of the government, that a legislation is an economic legislation" and must look at "the true nature of the law". It split the changes in two. The RBI Act change that creates a bearer banking instrument can be called a financial provision "to the extent that it seeks to introduce a new form of a bearer banking instrument. However, any resemblance to an economic policy ends there." The rest were "provisions mandating non-disclosure of information on electoral financing" and "provisions permitting unlimited corporate funding to political parties", and both "relate to the electoral process". Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The Court, used the government's own papers. The Finance Ministry and RBI correspondence showed the bonds were introduced "only to curb black money in the electoral process, and protect informational privacy of financial contributors". The Union itself called the changes an "electoral reform", so "the submission of the Union of India that the amendments deal with economic policy cannot be accepted." Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
On the presumption of constitutionality, the Court gave two reasons for the presumption: The democratic accountability of legislators, and their access to information courts lack. But the presumption is rebutted "when a prima facie case of violation of a fundamental right is established", and then "the onus then shifts" to the State. The petitioners had cited John Hart Ely's representation-reinforcement model and Subash Chandra v. Delhi Subordinate Service Selection Board to argue that laws on the electoral process should get no presumption. The Court rejected that: Courts "cannot carve out an exception to the evidentiary principle" because of the democratic legitimacy legislators enjoy. The petitioners must first show a prima facie infringement, and then the State must justify it. In other words, the Court gave the Union the ordinary presumption and still found for the petitioners; the holding does not rest on a special rule for election laws. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The factual base on money and politics. Next, the Court noted that the law does not bar electoral financing by the public: Corporates and individuals may contribute, and "the legal regime has not prescribed a cap on the financial contributions which can be received by a political party or a candidate". It then wrote: "It is believed that money does not vote but people do. However, studies have revealed the direct and indirect influence of money on electoral politics," citing Conrad Foreman, Money in Politics, 52 UIC J. Marshall L. Rev. 185 (2018). Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
It described money working through vote buying and through campaign spending, which has "a measurable influence on voting behavior" through television advertisements, campaign events and personal canvassing. It separated the informed voter (campaigns add to what they know) from the uninformed voter (campaigns "play a much more persuasive role"), citing D. Sunshine Hillygus and David Baron's 1994 American Political Science Review paper. It noted that parties sponsor "religious festivals and community fairs" and "sporting matches and literary competitions where cash awards are given", citing Michael Collins in Kapur and Vaishnav, Costs of Democracy (OUP 2018). Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
It described how money filters candidates and excludes new parties. Parties prefer candidates who can self-finance, so "candidates who belong to socio-economically weaker sections face added barriers". New parties, "in particular, parties representing the cause of marginalized communities", form coalitions where the bigger partner pays for propaganda, vehicles, rallies and cadre costs, and the junior party dilutes its ideology "in exchange of its political sustenance". The Court listed its own earlier cases that take a critical view of "big money": Kanwar Lal Gupta v. Amar Nath Chawla, Vatal Nagaraj v. R. Dayanand Sagar (Justice Krishna Iyer) and Common Cause v. Union of India. The Court then framed the question for Part F. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
What the amendments did. Under Section 29C of the RPA as amended, a party "need not disclose" contributions received through bonds. Under Section 13A of the Income Tax Act as amended, there is no record-keeping duty for bond contributions. In Section 182 of the Companies Act the earlier duty to give particulars in the profit and loss account was deleted, so a company discloses only the total. The Court said: "Maintaining the anonymity of the contributor is a crucial and primary characteristic of the Electoral Bond Scheme"; a bond is a bearer instrument that "does not carry the name of the buyer", and the bank may disclose buyer information only to a competent court or on a criminal case. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
How the Court built the right. The Court set the question: Does the scheme infringe the voter's right to information, and does that right reach contributions to parties? the Court said its decisions on the right to information fall in two phases. In the first it traced the right to "good governance, transparency and accountability", on the idea that citizens hold the State to account and so must know what it does. It described this first phase in the setting of the State's privilege against disclosing evidence. In the 1960s disclosure of State documents was framed as a clash of public and private interest under Section 124 of the Evidence Act. In State of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain, Justice K.K. Mathew traced the right to information to Article 19(1)(a). In S.P. Gupta v. Union of India, the judges' appointment correspondence case, Justice P.N. Bhagwati said the Constitution guarantees the "right to know", needed to secure "true facts" about the administration. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The Court said the first phase "focussed on the close relationship between the right and open governance", with a footnote citing Dinesh Trivedi v. Union of India (1997) for "sunlight is the best disinfectant". It described the second phase: Information matters to form views on "social, cultural and political issues" and to take part in debate, to "discover the truth in a marketplace of ideas" and to secure self-development. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
Here the Court then turned to candidates, through Union of India v. ADR (2002) and PUCL v. Union of India (2003). In ADR it traced the voter's right to know a candidate's "antecedents, including the criminal past" to Article 19(1)(a). The case began in the Delhi High Court under Article 226 to implement Law Commission recommendations. Voters must be "sufficiently informed so that they may influence intelligently" the polls, and such information is necessary for elections to be "free and fair". The three-judge bench rejected the argument that candidate information is not "public information" since it only helps voters decide. The Court noted that the ADR bench had said the ECI can ask for information about expenditure incurred by parties to maintain the purity of elections, but that "the operative portion of the judgment did not reflect this observation". So party funding was mentioned in ADR but not in its directions. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
Parliament then amended the RPA and added Section 33-B, saying a candidate need not disclose anything beyond what the law requires "notwithstanding any judgment"; in PUCL the Court struck it down, with Justice M.B. Shah writing for the majority. In his concurrence, Justice Venkatarama Reddi said two postulates govern the right to vote: Forming an opinion about candidates and expressing a choice by vote. A voter must have "relevant and essential information". He would treat only "crucial" and "essential" disclosures as part of the fundamental right and saw ADR's five directions as filling a "legislative vacuum", not as "inflexible and immutable theorems". He held Section 33-B bad because Parliament cannot impose "a blanket ban" on disclosure beyond the RPA, since the scope of the right may expand with future "exigencies and necessities". He backed disclosure of a candidate's family assets because of "the prevalence of Benami transactions" and said disclosure serving the right to information "would trump" privacy because it serves the larger public interest. The Court drew its principles from both phases: The voter's right rests on both, and the common thread is that information is needed for informed citizenship and effective voting. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
From candidates to parties. The Court set two issues: Can candidate disclosure be extended to "political parties", and if so, is information on party funding essential? the Court said ADR and PUCL gave relief only for candidates "because of the limited nature of the reliefs sought", and that their ratio is that voters have a right to information essential to vote effectively. The extension to parties is thus a step the Court took in this judgment. It noted that the Constitution did not mention parties when adopted, and the Tenth Schedule (Fifty-Second Amendment, 1985) was the first reference, yet "statutory provisions relating to elections accorded considerable importance to political parties". Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
It took up the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order 1968, which divides parties into recognised and unrecognised and gives recognised parties reserved symbols. The Court said the aim is to help voters identify and remember the party: In 1951 "the literacy rate in India was 18.33 percent", and "most of the voters identified a political party only with its symbol and this still continues to the day", citing the Maharani of Jaipur's memoirs in a footnote. The Court gave the Tamil Nadu example of parties such as DMK, AIADMK, Dravida Kazhagam and DMDK with similar names, where symbols matter. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
India uses open-list first-past-the-post, which might seem to favour candidates over parties, but the Court said one cannot conclude that voters decide only on candidates, given an EVM that shows the candidate's name with the party symbol. Manifestos push voters "away from a candidate centric" view toward "a party centric perception of elections". The Westminster form of government, with no strict separation of legislature and executive, makes parties intrinsic to forming a government, since the leader of the party with a majority is called to form it. The Court turned to the Tenth Schedule, whose paragraph 2 lists the grounds for disqualification for defection: Voluntarily giving up membership, and voting or abstaining against the party's direction without permission and without condonation. In Kihoto Hollohon v. Zachillhu, a seven-judge bench held that a candidate set up by a party is elected on the party's programme. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The holding. From there the Court gave four reasons why the party is a relevant unit: Voters associate voting with parties through symbols; the executive is chosen from the legislature by party or coalition majority; the Tenth Schedule gives parties prominence; and information about funding is essential to an effective vote. The Court repeated that ADR and PUCL had already held that a voter has a right to information essential to exercise the freedom to vote. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
On political equality, the Court said "one person one vote" is guaranteed through equal-population constituencies, but economic inequality "leads to differing levels of political engagement" and political inequality persists despite the constitutional guarantee. Its footnotes include an American field experiment (a 2016 American Journal of Political Science paper) in which 191 Congressional offices made themselves available three to four times more often when told prospective attendees were donors. It said information on donors need not be hunted by every voter, since "electronic and print media" would present it, including "the probable link between the contribution and the licenses which were given to the company". Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The Court set out the Union's best point: To show quid pro quo "it is necessary that the political party has knowledge of the particulars of funding to its party. The political party to whom contributions are made cannot enter into a quid pro quo arrangements if it is unaware of the donor." The Court said: "We do not agree with this submission." It held that "the de jure anonymity of the contributors does not translate to de facto anonymity". A contributor could hand a bond to a party office-bearer or legislator, send it to the party office with a name, or disclose after depositing. The Court also said "ninety four percent of the contributions through electoral bonds have been made in the denomination of one crore", so bonds give "economically resourced contributors who already have a seat at the table selective anonymity vis-a-vis the public and not the political party". (In Part C this figure was counsel's submission; here the Court uses it as data drawn from "the data on contributions made through electoral bonds"..) The holding: Information about funding "is essential for a voter to exercise their freedom to vote in an effective manner. The Electoral Bond Scheme and the impugned provisions to the extent that they infringe upon the right to information of the voter by anonymizing contributions through electoral bonds are violative of Article 19(1)(a)." Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
Can the restriction be justified? After that the Court took the aim from Arun Jaitley's statement: Earlier tax incentives for banking-channel donations "had only marginally improved" things, parties "continued to receive funds through anonymous sources", and donors were reluctant to give by bank because disclosure "would entail adverse consequences". So donor privacy was a means to bring money into banks. The Solicitor General, Tushar Mehta, argued instead that donor privacy "is an end in itself". Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The petitioners said a restriction on Article 19(1)(a) must fall within Article 19(2). The Court listed the eight grounds (sovereignty and integrity, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, contempt of court, defamation, and incitement to an offence) and said that curbing black money "is traceable to public interest", but "public interest is not one of the grounds stipulated in Article 19(2)"; of the Article 19 rights only 19(1)(g) can be limited on that ground. It reviewed Sakal Papers v. Union of India and the right to information in Cricket Association of Bengal, reading the opinions of Justices Sawant and Jeevan Reddy. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
It answered: The right to information under Article 19(1)(a) "can only be restricted based on the grounds stipulated in Article 19(2)". Could black money fall under "public order"? No, because a Constitution Bench read "public order" to mean "public safety and tranquility", disorder of "local significance in contradistinction to national upheavals". So "the purpose of curbing black money is not traceable to any of the grounds in Article 19(2)." Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The alternative holding: Proportionality, assuming the aim is legitimate. The Court said: "We proceed to apply the subsequent prongs of the proportionality standard, even assuming that curbing black money is a legitimate purpose." What follows is therefore an alternative holding, given in case the first is wrong. The Court gave the Union's data: In 2016-17, the year bonds were introduced, 81 percent of contributions (Rs 580.52 crore) were received as "voluntary contributions", which the Court said are unregulated and "allowed the circulation of black money". After the scheme, 47 percent of contributions came through bonds, "which is regulated money". The Union said anonymity "incentivizes" people to give through banks, and assuming the Union was right on rational connection, non-disclosure has a "rational nexus with the goal". Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
On this the Court began the necessity stage: Is anonymity the least restrictive means? The Court compared three channels for a voter's information: Other electronic transfer, electoral trusts and bonds. With a direct electronic transfer to a party, a voter "would receive complete information about contributions made above twenty thousand". For bonds, the voter gets nothing under Section 29C. The Court revisited its own interim order of October 31, 2023, which had prima facie suggested that a voter could match a company's total under Section 182(3) with a party's total. On "a detailed analysis" the Court now said that match "would not reveal the particulars of the donations", because the company and the party both report only a consolidated figure, so the particulars about which party got the money, "which is crucial to the right to information of political funding cannot be identified". Through an electoral trust, a voter gets partial information: The amount the donor gave and that it went to one of the trust's parties, but not the exact split. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
The Court accepted for argument's sake that "assuming that anonymity incentivizes contributions through banking channels... Electoral bonds would be the most effective means in curbing black money, followed by Electoral Trust, and then other means of electronic transfer". But "the Scheme is not fool-proof": Nothing checks the trading of bonds, even though Clause 14 says bonds shall not be eligible for trading. It concluded that below Rs 20,000 other electronic transfer is the least restrictive means, and above Rs 20,000 an electoral trust is. Because the scheme is not the least restrictive means, "there is no necessity of applying the balancing prong". It held that the scheme "does not fulfill the least restrictive means test", that it "is not the only means for curbing black money", and that the alternatives "substantially fulfill the purpose and impact the right to information minimally". Justice Khanna differs in method here: He reaches the balancing stage, while the Chief Justice stops at necessity on this aim. Source: Judgment, ADR v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (Feb 15, 2024)
Get the next file
One email when a new file is published. No paid service needed.