The Supreme Court on Monday rejected State Bank of India’s request to extend the deadline for providing details of electoral bonds including names of buyers and political parties who cashed them, holding that the information was “readily available” with the bank.
SBI must submit the details from April 12, 2019 by “the end of business hours” on March 12 (Tuesday), failing which the state-owned bank’s chairman and managing director could face court proceedings contempt, said the supreme court.
The bank sought time until June 30 to provide the information, telling the court in a petition last week that “decoding” the data and “matching donors to the donations would be a complex process.”
A five-member bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud also directed the Election Commission of India to put the information provided by SBI on its official website by 5 pm on March 15.
Pushing the deadline to the end of June would have delayed the release of the information after the Lok Sabha elections, expected to be held in April-May. For now, the apex court has refrained from initiating contempt proceedings against SBI for not meeting the March 6 deadline set in the judgment passed on February 15.
“Though we do not exercise the contempt jurisdiction, we point out to SBI that this court will proceed against it for willful disobedience of court if it does not adhere to the directions issued by the Court,” the bench said in its order.
Dismissing the government’s electoral bond scheme on February 15, the Constitution bench directed SBI to furnish by March 6 the “details” of electoral bonds, including the “date of purchase of each electoral bond, the name of the purchaser of the bond and the nominal value of the electoral bond purchased”. The bank was also directed to submit the “details” of parties that received contributions through electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India.
Providing this information may not link the buyer of the bond with the political party that cashed it, if SBI does not disclose the “unique number” of each electoral bond.
In its petition last week, the bank said it needed to decode details of 22,217 bonds, which would involve decoding, compiling and collating 44,434 (twice the number of electoral bonds issued) information sets because the details related to buyers and recipients were stored in. two different information silos.
On Monday, the court, however, said it had asked SBI for “clear disclosure” of donations and “not to do matching exercise”.
Speaking to ET, advocate Prashant Bhushan, counsel for one of the petitioners, said “the details provided by SBI must include the unique number”. He said the unique number will help match the bond’s buyer with the political party that cashed it. Bhushan warned that if SBI did not disclose this, he would again move the high court seeking legal proceedings against the bank and its chairman.
“The whole object (of disclosing information) is for people to know who donated money to which political parties. The purpose will be defeated if the unique number is not disclosed by SBI. It will be a gross contempt,” Bhushan told ET.
Even if SBI does not do the matching, the money donated by an entity or individual to a political party can be ascertained using the unique number, he said.
Appearing on behalf of SBI, senior advocate Harish Salve pressed for an extension. Claiming who contributed to which political party is a time-consuming process, he said. “Regardless of the unique number not visible to the naked eye would enable the disclosure; the submission of SBI in the application sufficiently indicates that information that is directed by the court is readily available” with it, the court said.
SBI reprimanded
The bench reprimanded SBI for simply seeking an extension of the deadline without disclosing the “extent of matching” it had done in the past 26 days since the day of the judgment asking it to provide the information. “Our judgment is from February 15. In the last 26 days, what extent of compliance has been done by you. What steps have you taken in the last 26 days? We expect a degree of sincerity on the part of SBI,” the CJI said . noticed
Justice BR Gavai, part of the bench, said that conducting a “matching exercise” was not part of the direction issued by the apex court. “Don’t go by what is suggested. We talked in black and white. What grade have you reached (in matching the links),” he asked.
“You accept that there is no difficulty in giving details of who bought, etc… So in 26 days, at least 10,000, etc., must be spared,” Justice Sanjiv Khanna said.