Two days after the Supreme Court filed charges in the electoral bonds case, State Bank of India (SBI) today filed an affidavit informing that it has submitted data on the bonds to the Election Commission of India (EC). SBI said in its compliance affidavit that it had submitted the data to the pollster through a pen drive. The data is said to be located in two password-protected PDF files.
The bank also said in its affidavit that a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were issued between April 2019 and February 15, 2024, before the Supreme Court struck down the scheme. Of these, 22,030 bonds were redeemed by political parties. The remaining 187 funds have been redeemed in accordance with regulations and deposited into the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund, the bank said.
Under the now-defunct electoral bond scheme, donors could buy bonds and donate to the political party of their choice. But parties must redeem the bonds within 15 days, otherwise the amount will be transferred to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.
In a landmark ruling on February 15, the Supreme Court held that the electoral bond scheme was “unconstitutional” and “infringed upon citizens’ right to information about possible quid pro quos between donors and political parties”.
SBI was ordered to immediately stop issuing bonds and submit details of its donations to the European Commission, which will make them public.
The court set a deadline of March 6 for SBI to submit data, while the EC was asked to publish the data by March 13. But the bank asked the court to extend the deadline to June 30. The move was questioned by the SBI Association. The Democratic Reform Party was among the petitioners opposing the electoral bonds scheme.
On Monday, the court rejected the SBI’s request and said the details must be shared by Tuesday. Currently, the European Commission has been given until 5pm on Friday to upload the data to its website.
Senior lawyer Harish Salve, who appeared before SBI, said the bank had followed SOPs to store information on the electoral bonds scheme outside the core banking system. “I have full details of who bought the bonds, where the money came from and which party tendered how much. I now also have to enter the names of the buyers. Those names have to be checked and cross-checked with the bonds Number.”
In response, the court responded that it did not require banks to match donors with amounts received by political parties. Chief Justice DY Chandrachud said: “We have not asked you to do the matching exercise. Therefore, seeking time to say that you are going to do the matching exercise is not justified and we have not directed you to do so.”
