 "Have shared electoral bonds details with ECI: SBI tells Supreme Court")
The State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday filed a compliance affidavit in the Supreme Court, saying that it has submitted details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission.
In the affidavit, the country’s largest state-run-bank told the apex court that 22,217 electoral bonds were purchased and 22,030 were redeemed by political parties between April 1, 2019, and February 15, 2024.
The filing, however, does not mention that the unique code on each electoral bond that could be used to match each donation to the party that received it is part of the details sent to the EC.
This point was raised by senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for the SBI, on Monday, where he told the Supreme Court that the bank was finding it challenging in reconciling donor details and redemption details, which were stored in separate information silos.
“We need a little more time to comply with Your Lordship’s order,” he had told the court on Monday.
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In reply to this, Chief Justice of India(CJI) DY Chandrachud had pointed out that the court’s directions did not require the bank to conduct a “matching exercise” but simply to disclose the information. The CJI noted that the bank had all the necessary details, as evidenced by its KYC records.
The court had come down heavily on SBI on Monday for seeking an extension to furnish electoral bonds details and told the bank to disclose the information to the Election Commission by close of business hours on March 12 (Tuesday).
With this, the plea by SBI seeking an extension of time till June 30, 2024, to give details of electoral bonds from April 12, 2019, to February 15, 2024, was dismissed. ECI is supposed to publish the details on its website by 5pm on March 15.
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Wednesday said the poll panel has received data on electoral bonds from SBI and it will be disclosed on time.
In its affidavit, SBI said it “has ready records in which the date of purchase, denomination and name of buyer were recorded, and (in relation to political parties) the date of encashment and the denominations of the bonds encashed were recorded.”
The filing said the data was handed over to the ECI in a pen drive with two PDF documents that are password-protected.
An envelope containing the passwords was given with a letter addressed to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Tuesday.
“The bonds which were not encashed by the political party within the validity period of fifteen days during this period have been transferred to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund,” the letter said.
“Electoral bonds were sold and redeemed in phases during this period and Phase XI started from April 1, 2019. The number of bonds set out in the Application…included [by oversight] the bonds that were purchased during the period commencing April 1, 2019 and not from April 12, 2019. A total number of 22,217 bonds were purchased during the period April 1, 2019 till February 15, 2024,” the bank said.
Total number of bonds purchased from April 1 to 11, 2019 is 3346 and the total number of bonds redeemed during this period is 1609.
Between April 12, 2019 and February 15, 2024, total number of bonds purchased is 18,871 and total number of bonds redeemed is 20,421.
The Supreme Court had on February 15 struck down the electoral bonds scheme, calling it “unconstitutional” and “arbitrary”.
It had ordered SBI, which is the issuing bank, to immediately cease issuing electoral bonds, share the names of the purchasers, value of the bonds and their recipients with the Election Commission by March 6, and asked the latter to disclose those details by March 13.