Splitting into multiple comments as Hacker News is complaining that it is too long. I'll answer in the order of the most contentious issue you raised first. I will tackle the easy ones in the end.

Responding to 8.3:

> In response, the BJP government has amended the FCRA Act itself, and exempted from scrutiny all foreign funding to parties retrospectively from 1976

This is partly true and some of the wording is incorrect (and facts are misinterpreted). Firstly, the article is written by Pavan K Varma who is a Politician from an Opposition Party (and was recently removed from the party). Not saying that it somehow invalidates his points. Just that there can be vested interests in this as it is his opinion.

The fact is that the Congress Government had already implemented this in 2010 (in a previous amendment to the act). The current BJP Government shifted the year from 2010 further back to 1976. Even if the current BJP Government hadn't amended it, it wouldn't have any issues itself as the case concerned those Governments pre-2014 as per the Court order (and would have scrutinized the previous BJP Government of the 90s headed by different individuals, all of whom are not even in power today). The current BJP Government probably did it to not want to waste Government resources and time on checking every single donation received from 1976 onwards for all parties. This is just my guess. An explanation of this in the Supreme Court will definitely be provided by the Government. We can only wait for that explanation. But even then, I'll try to answer with my limited understanding of the matter.

Pavan K Varma seems to have misunderstood the amendment. The amendment declared what is considered a "foreign source". The technicality is that of having received "foreign contributions" and it being violation of FCRA act. That part I agree with. What I disagree with is that it can now no longer be "scrutinized". That is patently false. It can be scrutinized but cannot be called "illegal". Now is this ethical/correct thing to do? Absolutely not. I suspect all the Political parties arrived at an understanding to not allow skeletons of the past to tumble out in public domain and collectively agreed to allow this amendment to pass. It is not mere coincidence that the Government passed this Amendment without discussion amidst din in the Parliament orchestrated by the Opposition benches. It did so fully in collusion with Opposition parties as well (as they knew what was in the amendment and did not want to discuss it in public domain). This should not have been done this way. It would have been better if there was a discussion held, the political parties accepted their faults of the past and declared to the Nation that they'll rectify it going forward. But it wasn't done because the Opposition has its own skeletons to hide and hence is weak. The ruling dispensation has its own skeletons to hide but is not willing to go through them as it has power and can do whatever it likes. Which is why I stressed on having a strong opposition in my final point in my previous reply. This sort of constructive opposition is needed so that the Government is put in the dock and truth comes out. But we have such a weak opposition (primarily cos it has its own horrid past) that it targets the Government only on those points where it knows it is bound to lose.

Anyways, this is where the Supreme Court comes in and now that the matter is before the Court, the Court will definitely take a call.

Now is it possible for Government to retrospectively fix this illegality? Yes it is possible. It has all the legislative powers to do this. Can Court strike down this amendment? Not possible at all as Judiciary cannot overstretch to that extent. It can only interpret the Law not amend it. It can strike down a Law if it has specific proof of the Law being used for malicious intent. I don't see that happening. As the Government can easily explain it away by saying that the Law was enacted without keeping in mind "so and so [insert excuse here]" and hence needed to be Amended. In fact, this sort of stuff happens quite regularly even for regular citizens like you and me, where stringent penalties (both civil and criminal) are sometimes retrospectively amended as the Law was enacted wrongly to begin with (happened in GST amendments so many times I lost count). In my case specifically (since I am an exporter and this applies to all exporters), the Government, through RBI, decided to push the date for regularization of Bank Realization Certificates indefinitely (even though it is against FEMA regulations) to facilitate exports which were badly affected during COVID crisis. This was done through an order by RBI. Another one is forgiving/waiving of farmer loans. It is literally making something illegal legal. Another good example is retrospectively amending the imposition of a minimum alternative tax on foreign companies so that FDI inflows are not affected. Not all retrospective amendments are "bad" per se. Sometimes the Law is just too strict to be able to do anything meaningful with the Law requiring such retrospective amendments as such Laws were enacted at a time where such issues were not envisioned to occur. The only time retrospective amendment was negatively scrutinized was during the Vodafone case where Vodafone dragged Indian Government to the International Court of Arbitration, Hague with the Indian Government losing the case.

> While the common man has to declare every cent of their income, political parties are allowed to take huge sum of money without disclosing any details

This is wrong. Political parties are 100% exempt from paying taxes on donations. However, they are not given relief from disclosing details of the donations. In fact, the Political parties are duty bound to declare every single paisa they get. Any political party as per Section 13A is required to furnish return of income under Section 139(4B) if its income exceeds maximum amount not chargeable to tax (limit is computed before taking into consideration Section 13A exemption). Tax slab applicable for political parties is same as the one applicable to normal resident individual. It is the responsibility of CEO of the political party to file the return of income and also to sign and verify the same.

The bone of contention really is that Electoral Bonds introduces anonymous electronic donations. But that was the case before as well. Except it was in hard cash and not electronic cash. And hard cash = black money. Electoral Bonds on the other hand can only be purchased through check or demand draft with full KYC. So even though the payee is not necessary to be declared (as donors would like to protect their affiliation), the amount itself is not black money at the very least as it has to now only be paid through Cheque/Demand Draft and not Cash. Now the question is, should the payee details be declared? What if I donated to Congress today and some despot/tyrant takes over India tomorrow and gets a list of all donors who donated to Congress so as to kill them? Do I want my political affiliation to be declared publicly? This is a question of privacy of an individual/corporate entity and not of legality. What if me donating to BJP leads to some mob deciding to cancel me for my political affiliation? Isn't that what happened in US where US Companies were forced to shut down their donations to a certain political party by the mob because it did not align with mob interests else be cancelled for supporting such party? This directly affects my Freedom of Expression. If my voting preference must be kept private and anonymous, why should my Electoral donations be forced to be made public? Wouldn't that reveal my voting preference? How ethical is that?