New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea by the State Bank of India seeking an extension till June 30 to file information on electoral bonds and directed the bank to furnish all details by close of business hours on Tuesday (March 12).
A five-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud said asked the ECI to publish the details of electoral bonds, as submitted by SBI, by 5 pm March 15, 2024. The apex court warned the SBI chairman and managing director of being proceeded against for contempt of court if the order is not complied with within the timeline.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, who represented the SBI, submitted before the apex court that the bank will need more time to collate the details and matching them as the information were kept in two different silos with its branches.
He offered that the nationalised bank will be able to complete the exercise of furnishing details in three weeks time, provided the matching exercise is to be done away with. The bench wondered why the SBI wanted to match the details of donors and donee with other information, when no such direction has been issued by it.
"The SBI has to just open the sealed cover, collate the details and give the information to the Election Commission," the apex court said. It also asked the bank about the steps taken by it for complying with the directions given by the apex court in its February 15 judgment.
At the beginning of the hearing, the CJI told Salve the apex court, in its judgment delivered on February 15, had asked SBI about the plain disclosure and the bank should have simply complied with the judgment. The apex court also shot a volley of tough questions to the bank and asked what it has done for the past 26 days.
Salve said the bank had followed an SOP to store information about the electoral bonds scheme outside the core banking system and requested the court to grant some more time to comply with the order. He said the bank is trying to collate the information and “we are having to reverse the entire process” and added, “we as a bank were told that this is supposed to be a secret”.
The bench said, "You have to just open the sealed cover, collate the details and give the information." Salve said the bank has full details on who purchased the bond and also full details from where the money came from and which political party tendered how much. He added that he has to also now put the name of purchasers and the names have to be collated, cross-checked with the bond numbers.
The apex court said that it is submitted that matching information from one silo to another is a time-consuming process and made it clear to the bank that it did not ask to do the matching exercise. “So to seek time saying that a matching exercise is to be done is not warranted, we have not directed you to do that," said the bench.
The top court asked some tough questions to the nodal bank for the issuance of Electoral Bonds. In one of the tough posers to the SBI, the court asked what the bank was doing for the past 26 days.
"In the last 26 days, what steps have you taken? Your application is silent on that," the bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, said.
On March 4, the SBI moved the apex court seeking extension till June 30 to disclose the details of the electoral bonds encashed by political parties. The bank in its application said that due to stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, "decoding" the electoral bonds and matching the donors to the donations would be a complex process.
On February 15, the apex court in a landmark verdict had scrapped the electoral bonds scheme and directed the Election Commission of India to make the details of donation public by March 13.
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