New Delhi, Nov. 25 -- The Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of the Centre and Election Commission of India (ECI) on a plea to bring transparency in political party funding and to quash the provision in the Income Tax Act that permits them to collect donations in cash up to a specified amount. A bench of justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta directed notices to be issued on the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a Delhi-based lawyer Khem Singh Bhati who challenged the constitutional validity of section 13A(d) of the Income Tax Act, 1961. This provision which relates to exemption on income for political parties specifically states in 13A(d) that "no donation exceeding Rs.2,000 is received by a political party other than by cheque, bank draft or electronic clearing system." The petition argued that cash donations received by parties over the previous years do not provide information about donors and claimed that this violates the fundamental right of citizens to know about the source of funding of political parties. It further sought a direction to ECI to prescribe a bar on receiving cash donation as a condition for registration of a political party and allotment of election symbol. Senior advocate Vijay Hansaria who appeared for the petitioner told the court that in 2024, the Supreme Court struck down the Electoral Bond scheme on the ground the scheme violates voters' fundamental right to information guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. The court issued notice on the petition seeking response of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), six registered national political parties and six registered state political parties, besides the Centre and ECI and kept the matter for hearing after four weeks. The parties to which notice was issued include Bharatiya Janata Party, Indian National Congress, CPI(M), Bahujan Samaj Party, Aam Aadmi Party, and Meghalaya's National People's Party. The state political parties include Tamil Nadu's ruling party DMK, West Bengal's ruling party Trinamool Congress, Jharkhand's ruling party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Janata Dal (United), Biju Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party. The bench initially asked the petitioner to approach the high court as it observed, "Let the high court do this exercise. Why should we entertain?" Hansaria pointed out that the issue concerns all political parties. "The issue is not confined to any one political party at one place. It concerns all political parties. Going to one high court will not serve the purpose." The petition insisted that the political parties must disclose the name and all other particulars of the person paying any amount of money to it and no amount should be received in cash so as to maintain transparency in the political funding. It further urged the court to direct ECI to scrutinise the contribution reports under Form 24A submitted by all national and state recognised political parties and to require them to deposit the amount received by way of contributions for which address or PAN number have not been furnished. Against the political parties, the petition sought their response for defaulting under paragraph 16A of the Election Symbol Order, 1968 that allows ECI to suspend or withdraw the reserved symbol for failure to submit Form 24A contribution reports with full particulars within prescribed period. Based on the contribution reports received by the ECI from political parties last year, the petition showed several deficiencies to show how information about political party funding lacks transparency. The information by several parties did not contain addresses and PAN numbers of donors and several parties claimed to have received large amounts of money as bank interest; without furnishing particulars of the banks where the accounts are held. The BJP claimed Rs.369 crore under this head followed by other parties, including BJD (Rs.52 crore), AAP (Rs.38 crore) among others as per the report submitted to ECI. Several political parties showed a large sum of money received in cash against subscriptions without giving any details of the donors....