A day after the Supreme Court struck down the Modi government’s contentious electoral bonds scheme, leading English newspapers in India splashed the news across their front pages.

The Hindu in Delhi led with a headline that noted the top court had called electoral bonds “unconstitutional”. The scheme “provides blanket anonymity to political donors, as well as critical legal amendments allowing rich corporations to make unlimited political donations”, it said. The judgement therefore “belled the cat on the deep nexus between money and politics”.

Another story on page 15 quoted the BJP parroting its years-old line that the scheme had a “laudable objective of bringing transparency in poll funding”.

The newspaper’s editorial asked whether the “ validity of the scheme could have been decided earlier or the issuance of bonds on a regular basis stayed”. Calling the court’s reasoning “unexceptionable”, the editorial said the judgement was a “natural follow-up to a principle it had laid down years ago that the voters’ freedom of expression under Article 19(1)(a) will be incomplete without access to information on a candidate’s background”.

The Indian Express in Delhi carried the headline “Supreme Court lets the sunlight in”. One of the reports on page 1 said “all eyes” are now on the State Bank of India and the Election Commission.

“Will the names of electoral bond donors be known within a month of today?” the report said. “Officials in the Election Commission are confident that, following the specific orders of the Supreme Court, that will very much be possible by March 13.”

The Express editorial today said the verdict is “enormously welcome, especially because it is anchored in the citizen’s right to know”.

“Attempts to make political funding more transparent must continue...The government must be guided by the principles of transparency and accountability as it gives the issue a deeper look. That’s the central message of the SC’s landmark verdict,” it said.

The Times of India’s headline said the court “junks electoral bonds 5-0” as it “unanimously rejected the central government’s rationale of the electoral bond scheme...and ruled that voters could not be kept in the dark about huge donations to political parties when money played a significant role in elections”.

The newspaper’s editorial – headlined “Junked bonds” – said the word “landmark” is an “overused descriptor” but there’s “no other way” to describe the SC’s unanimous judgement.

“Corporate funding remains an unresolved issue in major democracies,” it said. “A ban on it is neither enforceable nor justifiable. Instead, reasonable restrictions to choke funding through shell companies and mandating detailed disclosure of political funding are pragmatic options. SC has opened the way to meaningful reform.”

Hindustan Times followed the same path, with the verdict dominating page 1. 

“The verdict came ahead of the Lok Sabha elections expected to take place in April or May this year...since the inception of the scheme, the Bharatiya Janata Party, in power at the centre since 2014, has received 54.8% of the electoral bonds purchased in this period…” the report said. 

An infographic detailed the centre’s options now: file a review petition against the verdict, bring in an ordinance for a new law on political funding, or a new law that removes the basis of the SC judgement.

Its editorial said election funding is a “messy affair the world over” and the “key issue is transparency”. But HT also sounded a note of caution:

“However, it would be facile to assume that scrapping the scheme would impact its political prospects. If the BJP is the largest recipient of the bonds, it is because the party is successful, not vice versa: Money, after all, tends to chase a winner. The Opposition’s demand for transparency in poll funding is legitimate, but it will be overreading the verdict to expect it to swing the polls its way.”

Finally, The Telegraph in Kolkata, which said the Supreme Court bench “ripped the shroud of secrecy around the donations of thousands of crore rupees made under the scheme”.

“According to the petitioners, official data revealed that more than 90 percent of the electoral bonds purchased were in denominations of Rs 1 crore, indicating the buyers were corporate bodies and not individuals,” it said.

Wondering what exactly the SC said while scrapping the scheme? Read our piece for the top five takeaways from the electoral bonds verdict.

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