The public-sector State Bank of India on Monday urged the Supreme Court to extend, from March 6 to June 30, the deadline for revealing the identities of the buyers of electoral bonds, in a move with deep political implications.
A June 30 deadline would mean the disclosures would come after the general election, a point that CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury highlighted to ask whether the new timetable was being sought “to protect Modi & BJP”.
A five-judge constitution bench had on February 15 quashed the electoral bonds scheme of 2018, which allowed anonymous donations to political parties, saying it was unconstitutional and facilitated quid pro quo with ruling parties.
It asked the SBI — issuer and redeemer of the bonds — to disclose to the Election Commission by March 6 the names of all the buyers of the bonds with the denominations and dates. The poll panel was to make the information public by March 13.
The BJP is said to have received the lion’s share of donations under the scheme.
The SBI told the apex court: “…There are certain practical difficulties with the decoding exercised and the timeline fixed for it.”
Extending the deadline “would be a travesty of Justice”, Yechury posted on X. “Is SBI seeking extension till after the general elections to protect Modi & BJP from exposure of the ‘quid pro quo’ that the Hon’ble Supreme Court apprehended?”
To the SBI’s plea that the data needed time to dig up, Yechury retorted: “In this digital age, all this information is a mouse-click away. Seeking extension raises suspicious apprehensions.”
The SBI’s application, filed through advocate Sanjay Kapur, said: “…Due to the stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, ‘decoding’ of the electoral bonds and the matching of the donor to the donations made would be a complex process.”
It said that to protect the donors’ anonymity, the bank had earlier laid down a standard operating procedure (SOP) for its 29 authorised branches, spread across India, relating to the sale and redemption of the electoral bonds.
Section 7.1.2 of the SOP said: “No details of Bond Purchaser including KYC and other details will be entered in CBS (core banking system).”
Therefore, the SBI pleaded, the details of the purchases made at the various branches were not stored centrally at any one place.
“The data related to the issuance of the bond and the data related to the redemption of the bond was kept recorded in two different silos. No central database was maintained. This was done so as to ensure that donors’ anonymity would be protected,” the SBI said.
The SBI added: “It can thus be noted that both sets of information were being stored independently of each other. Thus, to re-match them would be a task requiring significant amount of effort.”
The SBI said that each political party was required to maintain a designated account in any of the 29 authorised branches. It was only into this account that the electoral bonds received by that party could be deposited and redeemed. At the time of redemption, the original bond and the pay-in slip would be stored in a sealed cover and sent to the SBI Mumbai Main Branch.
