NEW DELHI: The State Bank of India (SBI) on Monday asked the Supreme Court to extend the deadline till June 30 to provide information on electoral bonds to the Election Commission.
In a landmark judgment on February 15, the SC struck down the electoral bond scheme for political funding, saying it violated the Constitutional right to freedom of expression and the right to information.
In its ruling months before the Lok Sabha polls, the apex court ordered the State Bank of India (SBI) to disclose to the Election Commission by March 6 the names of the contributors to the six-year scheme.
A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud directed that the SBI must disclose details of every electoral bond collected by parties. The information should include the date of encashment and the nominal value of the bonds and be submitted to the electoral commission by March 6.
The Election Commission should publish the information shared by SBI on its official website by March 13, the bench said.
What does SBI’s plea say
In the application filed before the apex court, the SBI claimed that retrieving information from “each silo” and the procedure of matching the information from one silo to that of the other would be a time-consuming exercise.
The plea submitted that due to strict measures taken to ensure that the identity of the donors is kept anonymous, “decoding” the electoral bonds and matching donors to the donations made would be a complex process.
“It submitted that the data related to the issuance of the bond and the data related to the redemption of the bond were kept recorded in two different silos. No central database was maintained. This was done to ensure that anonymity of donors would be protected .”
“It is submitted that donor details were kept in a sealed cover at the designated branches and all such sealed covers were deposited in the Main Branch of the Candidate bank which is located in Mumbai,” the plea said.
(With inputs from agencies)