The most natural objection to ADR v. Union of India (2024) is a separation of powers objection, and starting there, rather than with the Court's own reasoning, tests the judgment at its most vulnerable point.
The objection.
Political finance regulation looks like a policy question for elected legislators, not for judges. Deciding how much a company may donate, whether donations should be disclosed, and how to protect donors from retaliation involves weighing competing values, economic, political and administrative, that courts are not institutionally built to weigh. On this view, the Court trespassed into Parliament's domain when it struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme.
Why the objection does not hold once a fundamental right is in play.
The objection would be strong if the scheme were being challenged purely as bad policy. It was not. The challenge was that the scheme restricted the fundamental right of voters to receive information under Article 19(1)(a), and any law restricting a fundamental right must be tested against Article 19(2), regardless of whether the underlying subject is otherwise a legislative one. Tax law, criminal law and property law are all legislative subjects too, and a legislative pedigree has never shielded a statute from Article 19 scrutiny once a fundamental right is shown to be affected.
How the Court kept the intervention narrow.
The bench also did not attempt to design a political finance system. It applied the proportionality test to the specific feature it found objectionable, total anonymity for large, uncapped corporate donations, and struck down that feature along with the amendments enabling it. It left Parliament free to devise any new disclosure regime it chooses, so long as it satisfies Article 19(2). That restraint is itself an answer to the overreach objection: the Court reviewed a rights violation, it did not legislate a replacement.
What is left once the objection is answered.
Once separation of powers is shown not to bar the intervention, the substantive strengths of the ruling, its grounding in ADR (2002) and PUCL (2003), its rigorous use of proportionality, and its restoration of the corporate donation cap, stand largely unchallenged. What remains genuinely open is not whether the Court should have acted, but what Parliament now does in response, since electoral trusts and cash donations remain outside the judgment.
Meeting the strongest institutional objection head on, and finding that it fails once a fundamental right is at stake, confirms that the ruling was a legitimate and carefully bounded exercise of judicial review, even though it leaves the wider reform of political finance to Parliament.
\[ \boxed{\text{A legitimate, narrowly bounded exercise of judicial review, transformative in principle but leaving reform to Parliament}} \]