The State Bank of India (SBI) on March 13 informed the Supreme Court that details of electoral bonds anonymously purchased by contributors and encashed by political parties between April 2019 and February 15, 2024 were hand-delivered to the Election Commission of India (ECI) in order to facilitate public disclosure of political funding.
The SBI said a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were purchased and 22,030 were redeemed by political parties between April 1, 2019, and February 15, 2024.
From April 1, 2019 to April 11 the same month, 3,346 bonds were purchased and 1,609 were redeemed by parties. Between April 12, 2019, and February 15, 2024, donors bought 18,871 bonds and 20,421 were redeemed by parties, the SBI affidavit said.
Editorial |Names and bonds: On electoral bonds scheme, the Supreme Court, and the State Bank of India
Though the Supreme Court had sought information only from April 12, 2019, the bank said the selling and redeeming of electoral bonds had started from April 1.
The ECI has time till March 15 to compile and publish the information got from the bank on its official website.
The bank said it has shared information with the ECI about the dates of purchase of electoral bonds, the names of purchasers and denomination of the bonds. Similarly, the dates of encashment of the bonds, names of political parties which received the contributions and denomination of the bonds encashed were also provided to the top poll body.
The bank has shown impressive alacrity to divulge the information which was readily available with it. A five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud had put the bank on notice on March 11, threatening to initiate contempt action if it did not disclose the required information in the next 24 hours.
A Supreme Court judgment on February 15, 2024 had struck down the anonymous system of political funding called the ‘electoral bonds scheme’ while directing the SBI, which was the authorised one under the system, to disclose information about who bought the bonds for which political party.
The judgment had given the SBI time till March 6, 2024. But two days before the deadline, the bank had applied to the Supreme Court for an extension till June 30, well after the expected dates of the Lok Sabha elections.
Contempt petitions filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms, Common Cause and Communist Party of India (Marxist) had contended the bank was deliberately trying to ensure that details of donors and the amounts contributed to political parties anonymously were not disclosed to the public before the Lok Sabha elections due in April-May.
On March 11, the Bench led by the Chief Justice of India had convened in a special sitting to dismiss the bank’s application.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, for the SBI, had explained that matching the bonds purchased and names of donors with the parties which redeemed the bonds was a “time-consuming and complex” exercise. Details were kept in two separate silos and not stored in a digital format. The judgment had capsized the “core purpose” of the electoral bonds scheme, which was “utmost secrecy”.
“But we did not tell you to match the details. We had only asked you to do a plain disclosure. We just wanted you to comply with the judgment,” the Chief Justice had clarified to Mr. Salve.
