[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HE Supreme Court on Tuesday, July 02, 2019, issued notice to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Union Law Ministry and six state governments on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a direction from the apex court to declare the implementation of Direct Cash Transfer (DBT) schemes before and during the election process a corrupt electoral practice and therefore illegal and unconstitutional.
The schemes include the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Scheme which the Union of India had initiated and the Pasupu Kumkuma, NTR Atmabandhu, Rytu Bandhu, KALIA, Mukhya, Mantri Krishi Yojana initiated in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand and Karnataka.
The PIL was heard by a three-judge bench comprising the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose.
The petitioner, Pentapati Pulla Rao who was one of the contestants from Eluru Parliament Constituency in Andhra Pradesh on behalf of Janasena Party in the 2019 General elections, submitted that the Union of India had initiated a huge money distribution scheme called the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Scheme by way of a Direct Benefit (Cash) Transfer (DBT).
The scheme proposed to transfer Rs. 6000 to 12.50 crores to farmers and to implement it Rs. 20,000 crores had been allocated in the 2018-19 budget and a further Rs. 75,000 crores in the 2019-20 annual budget, Pulla Rao has said in his petition. PM Kisan is a central sector scheme with 100% funding from the Government of India. It became operational from December 1, 2018.
Pulla Rao alleged that it was clear that Rs. 2000 in cash would be transferred to farmers’ accounts after the declaration of the Model Code of Conduct and a further Rs. 2000 was proposed to be transferred in the month of April. Yet the Election Commission of India had not taken any action on this new scheme because according to them it had been launched before the announcement of election schedule and hence the Model Code of Conduct would not apply.
Andhra Pradesh alone had transferred Rs. 10,000 to 94 lakhs women, the petitioner said. He mentioned four different schemes that had been launched in Andhra Pradesh where cash had been transferred in instalments to women, farmers, old persons and widows and unemployed youth.
The petitioner claimed the cash transfer before the elections had begun in the State of Telangana in the year 2018, where the party in power had introduced a scheme namely “Rythu Bandhu” or “Relative of Farmers”, under which cash was directly transferred to farmers as input subsidy for agriculture. The scheme was well received by struggling farmers who constituted a substantial percentage of the electorate in Telangana State, according to the petitioner.
According to Pulla Rao, these direct cash transfer schemes constituted electoral bribes as they had all been implemented during the election process without budgetary allocations as per the constitutional mandate.
The petitioner also sought the framing of guidelines on the declaration of welfare schemes by both by the Central and states governments just before the commencement of the elections.
