The State Bank of India's (SBI) request to extend till June 30 the deadline for disclosing information about electoral bonds that political parties have encashed since April 2019 has been turned down by the Supreme Court.
The ruling was made on Monday by a five-judge Constitution bench that included Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra. The panel ordered the bank to release the information by March 12. It has been mandated that the Election Commission make this information available by March 15.
A plea to file a contempt of court case against SBI was also entertained by the bench, given the bank's failure to appear before the deadline.
Prior to the Lok Sabha elections, the bank was given till March 6 to provide details to the Election Commission of India (ECI). The directives were issued following the February 15 ruling against the electoral bonds program. The Supreme Court declared the program, which permitted anonymous political donations, to be "unconstitutional" and mandated that SBI reveal the beneficiaries of each donor's money donated since April 12, 2019.
SBI filed a motion with the supreme court on March 4 to extend the deadline for disclosing information about electoral bonds that political parties had cashed until June 30. The bank stated that while strict precautions had been taken to help maintain contributors' anonymity under the scheme, matching donations to donors is a complex task.
Senior Advocate Harish Salve, speaking on behalf of SBI, stated that the bank required more time to provide the ECI with information about electoral bonds since they did not want to "make a mistake" in their paperwork. Salve said, "KYC details were not stored digitally, so since the system was designed to be anonymous, there were no names in the core system." As a result, information about the buyer and donor of the purchase is separated into two silos and needs to be connected.
In response to the bank, the SC said that it had ordered donations to be disclosed clearly rather than to carry out a "matching exercise." The SC mentioned that all donor information was located in one location and questioned State Bank of India about its activities over the previous 26 days.
Regarding the electoral bonds system, CJI cited Clause 7(4), which said that although the authorized bank would treat buyers of the bonds with secrecy, they "shall be disclosed when called upon to do so or registration of an offence by a law enforcement agency." SBI was therefore required to provide information upon request.
