Question

If corporate donations are unlimited and anonymous, does it violate the Right to Information (RTI)?

Hint:

In election law questions, always link political transparency to Article 19(1)(a). Any scheme that suppresses donor identity or funding information almost always fails the “voter’s right to know” test.

Answer 1

The question bundles two features together, an unlimited amount and an anonymous source, and each raises its own constitutional problem, so it helps to take them one at a time before combining the answer.

The unlimited amount. Before the Electoral Bonds Scheme, Section 182 of the Companies Act capped a company's political donations at 7.5 percent of its average net profit over the previous three years, so even a generous donor company faced a ceiling tied to its real financial health. Removing that cap let any company, even one making losses, put unlimited sums into a party's coffers. A voter cannot judge whether a donation reflects genuine support or a purchase of future favours if there is no ceiling at all against which to measure it.

The anonymous source. Even with a cap in place, disclosure of who gave and how much matters, because voters use that information to see which interests stand behind a party. Removing disclosure meant a voter could not connect any donation to any donor, no matter how large. Union of India v. ADR (2002) and PUCL v. Union of India (2003) had already held that this kind of information forms part of the right to know under Article 19(1)(a).

Combining the two. Unlimited size makes the sums involved large enough to matter, and anonymity makes it impossible to trace those sums to any donor. Together they create a channel for influence that a voter cannot see or evaluate at all, which is precisely what Article 19(1)(a) is meant to prevent. The Supreme Court held in the 2024 Electoral Bonds judgment that this combination cannot be justified as a reasonable restriction under Article 19(2), since donor protection could have been achieved without total secrecy.

\[ \boxed{\text{Yes, both the unlimited size and the anonymity of corporate donations independently and jointly violate the Right to Information}} \]

Answer 2

The strongest case the government made for the Electoral Bonds Scheme deserves to be stated first and tested directly, rather than dismissed in passing.

The government's case for anonymity.
The defence was that corporate donors who give openly to a party risk retaliation if a rival party later comes to power, whether through tax scrutiny, denial of contracts, or other administrative harassment. Anonymity, on this view, protects legitimate political participation by companies that would otherwise stay out of funding politics altogether, and more funding routed through a formal banking channel is better than untraceable cash.

Why the defence does not survive scrutiny.
The argument treats anonymity as the only way to prevent retaliation, but the Supreme Court applied the proportionality test and asked whether a less restrictive alternative existed. It found one: disclosure to an independent authority coupled with statutory protection against victimisation would guard donors without hiding the information from voters entirely. Total anonymity was therefore excessive, not necessary.

The scale problem the defence ignores.
Even taking the retaliation concern at face value, it cannot justify removing the donation cap as well. Fear of retaliation might explain why a company wants its identity hidden, it does not explain why the amount it can donate should also be unlimited. Since the scheme removed both safeguards together, the anonymity defence, even if accepted at face value, only covers half of what the government actually did.

What remains once the defence falls.
Once the retaliation justification is shown to be broader than necessary and silent on the removal of the cap, what is left is a scheme that hides both who is giving and how much, from the very voters who are meant to judge whether a party's policies are shaped by its donors. That is a direct denial of the information Article 19(1)(a) guarantees.

Testing the government's own justification against the proportionality standard, rather than assuming it fails, shows precisely why it does fail, and why the conclusion favours the voter's right to know.

\[ \boxed{\text{Yes: the anonymity defence fails proportionality, so unlimited anonymous corporate donations violate the RTI}} \]