Day after SC rap, SBI submits details of electoral bonds to Election Commission

Top court had trashed SBI petition seeking extension of time, SBI had filed an application to extend time to disclose the details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties till June 30

PTI, March 12, 2024, New Delhi : The State Bank of India on Tuesday submitted details of the electoral bonds to the Election Commission, a day after the Supreme Court gave a stern order and set a one-day deadline to submit the data.

The poll panel will now collate and publsih the data on its website by March 15 as per the top court order.

"In compliance of the Hon'ble Supreme Court's directions to the SBI, contained in its order dated Feb 15 & March 11, 2024 (in the matter of WPC NO.880 of 2017), data on electoral bonds has been supplied by the State Bank of India to the Election Commission of India, today, March 12, 2024," the Election Commission said in a post on X.

The apex court on Monday trashed a petition filed by the state bank seeking extension of time till June 30 to disclose the details of electoral bonds and ordered that the data be submitted to the election commission by 5 pm on Tuesday.

The court wanted to know about the steps taken by the bank to comply with the directions it had issued while scrapping the controversial scheme of anonymous political funding on February 15.

"Mr Salve, our judgement is dated February 15, 2024. We are now on the 11th of March. In the last 26 days, what extent of matching has been done by you? What steps have you taken in the last 26 days? The application is absolutely silent on that," Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud told senior advocate Harish Salve, who was representing the bank.

Ordering the closure of the scheme, the top court had directed the SBI, the authorised financial institution under the scheme, to submit by March 6 the details of the electoral bonds purchased since April 12, 2019 till date to the EC. 

The bank, in its petition, argued that that retrieval of information from "each silo" and the procedure of matching the information of one silo to that of the other would be a time-consuming exercise. 

The application said 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.

The court, however, dismissed the plea and said the bank should submit the details by Tuesday.