This story is a part of #PaisaPolitics, HuffPost Indias investigation into how the Modi government brought untraceable funds into Indian politics. Read the rest of our series here .

NEW DELHI The Ministry of Law and Justice signed off on the Narendra Modi governments decision to hastily pass the controversial electoral bond scheme by bypassing the Rajya Sabha , despite putting on record that the governments strategy was illegal and unconstitutional, documents obtained by HuffPost India establish.

In a two-page note, the law ministry said this illegal step was a one-off exception and urged the Modi government to avoid considering this practice as a precedent, the documents reviewed by HuffPost India show.

Worse, crucial official deliberations on allowing even shell companies to secretly donate unlimited funds to political parties were simply not recorded in official meeting minutes. The deliberations were characterised as informal discussions between unnamed officials.

This is illegal as it violates a 2013 Supreme Court judgement on how official minutes must be recorded, and breaches the Manual of Office Procedure of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. The Ministry of Personnel reports directly to Prime Minister Modi.

Taken together, the documents show that Modis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP )-led government was so eager to allow corporations to secretly funnel money into politics that the government knowingly broke the law and tried to cover its tracks by refusing to record official deliberations in meeting minutes.

The electoral bond scheme allowing corporations, trusts, NGOs and private individuals to anonymously donate unlimited amounts of money to political parties, was first introduced by then-Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his 2017 budget speech. The BJP received 95% of the Rs 222 crore of electoral bonds sold in the first tranche in March 2018.

Reports from earlier this month show that 60% of the BJPs total funds raised through donations in 2018-19, Rs 1,450 crore, was through electoral bonds.

Implementing the electoral bonds scheme required changes to several laws. The most controversial changes involved scrapping a provision in the Companies Act which permitted only profit-making companies to donate money to a political party. The provision had also put a cap on the donations that companies could make annually and forced them to disclose to which party they were donating money.

The ruling BJP knew it would struggle to get this controversial scheme through the Rajya Sabha as it did not have enough representatives in Parliaments upper house.

Now, documents obtained under the Right to Information Act by transparency activist Saurav Das, a member of National Campaign for Peoples Right to Information (NCPRI), reveal how Jaitley bypassed the Rajya Sabha by slipping the most contentious aspects of the scheme into a money bill. Under Article 110 of the Indian Constitution, a money bill does not have to be passed by the Rajya Sabha.

The documents show that the Corporate Affairs ministry, also controlled by Jaitley, sought the Law Ministrys advice on the legality of using the money bill route. The law ministry concluded that in strict sense it may not be considered as money bill, but signed off anyway.

As a consequence, the most significant changes to election funding laws, with existential implications for the health of Indian democracy, were passed without even a debate in the Rajya Sabha, leave alone seeking the upper houses consent.

The Law and Justice ministry and the Corporate Affairs ministry did not respond to detailed queries sent by HuffPost India. This story will be updated once they respond.

Read how the Modi government overruled the Reserve Bank of India , misled the Election Commission of India , broke its own rules on Electoral Bonds, and arm-twisted the State Bank of India in its quest to funnel dark money into Indian politics.

Jaitleys scheme

In 2017, Arun Jaitley wore two hats: he was Indias Finance Minister and also the Minister for Corporate Affairs. To force the electoral bond scheme through Parliament, he would need both.

After he had introduced the idea of electoral bonds in the budget and the finance bill he tabled as Finance Minister, Jaitley, as corporate affairs minister, held a meeting with his officers on March 8, 2017, to discuss amendments to the Companies Act, 2013. Some of these amendments, such as the role of independent directors in companies, had been in the works for a while. None of them pertained to the regulations around political donations by corporations, show note sheets maintained by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and reviewed by HuffPost India.

Yet a file noting made a week later, on March 16, 2017, states that another amendment was decided at the meeting. This amendment had not been on the agenda when the March 8, 2017 meeting began.

It was, inter alia, decided that section 182 of the Companies Act, 2013 (Prohibition and restrictions regarding political contributions) may be amended, keeping in view the various steps being taken by the government to bring transparency in electoral funding, read the file noting. Inter alia, it is worth noting, literally means among other things.

The changes proposed to Section 182 were very significant: One change removed a provision capping the upper limit of corporate donations to 7.5% of net profits averaged over three years. The other change allowed corporations to hide the name of the political party to which they were donating.

The file notings do not reveal who made the proposal, but they say informal discussions had taken place between officers of the finance ministrys revenue department and the corporate affairs ministry after Jaitleys March 8, 2017, meeting.