The electoral bonds were a financial instrument in India to enable anonymous donations to political parties. Ethical considerations in electoral bonds are essential to ensure transparency, prevent corruption, and maintain public trust in the democratic process. The anonymity of the electoral bonds sparked controversy, raising concerns about transparency, accountability, and potential misuse in money laundering eventually leading to its abandonment in February 2024. This paper proposes a scheme to address these concerns using cryptographic primitives such as zero-knowledge proof and homomorphic encryption. Zero-knowledge proof enables to prove the validity of the computation done privately without revealing the sensitive data used in the computation. Homomorphic encryption enables to perform operations on encrypted data without requiring the data to be decrypted first maintaining the confidentiality of the data from the entity doing the operation. Smart contracts and blockchain enable the functionality of the process to be transparent among the stakeholders. This paper also presents a detailed analysis of the proposed scheme to show that it meets the required objectives. The proposed scheme aims to strengthen the trust in the political funding process by providing a mechanism to meet the potentially conflicting requirements of the right to privacy for the donors and the right to information for the citizens.

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Privacy and Transparency Enhanced Electoral Bonds Using Zero-Knowledge Proof, Homomorphic Encryption and Blockchain Technology

  • Puneet Bakshi,
  • Siddhant Bopche,
  • M. Vinodh Kumar

摘要

The electoral bonds were a financial instrument in India to enable anonymous donations to political parties. Ethical considerations in electoral bonds are essential to ensure transparency, prevent corruption, and maintain public trust in the democratic process. The anonymity of the electoral bonds sparked controversy, raising concerns about transparency, accountability, and potential misuse in money laundering eventually leading to its abandonment in February 2024. This paper proposes a scheme to address these concerns using cryptographic primitives such as zero-knowledge proof and homomorphic encryption. Zero-knowledge proof enables to prove the validity of the computation done privately without revealing the sensitive data used in the computation. Homomorphic encryption enables to perform operations on encrypted data without requiring the data to be decrypted first maintaining the confidentiality of the data from the entity doing the operation. Smart contracts and blockchain enable the functionality of the process to be transparent among the stakeholders. This paper also presents a detailed analysis of the proposed scheme to show that it meets the required objectives. The proposed scheme aims to strengthen the trust in the political funding process by providing a mechanism to meet the potentially conflicting requirements of the right to privacy for the donors and the right to information for the citizens.