NEW DELHI, Mar 11 : The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the application of the State Bank of India (SBI) seeking an extension till June 30 to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties and directed SBI to furnish the details by Tuesday.
A five-judge Constitutional bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra noted that “Submissions of SBI in the application indicates that information sought is readily available. Thus the application by SBI seeking extension of time until June 30 is dismissed.
SBI is directed to disclose the details by the close of business hours of March 12, 2024,” the Court ordered.
The bench also cautioned the SBI that in case it fails to comply with the Court’s direction, contempt of court proceedings will be initiated against them.
The bench said, “Though we are not exercising the contempt jurisdiction, we place SBI on notice that this court will proceed against it for ”wilful disobedience” of court if it does not adhere to the directions issued by the Top court,” the order said.
The Apex Court also directed ECI to put the information on each electoral bond encashed by political parties on its website by 5 pm on March 15.
The SC order said, “ECI shall publish information on the website by no later than 5 pm on March 15.”
The Court’s order came on a petition filed by SBI on Thursday seeking an extension till June 30 to disclose the details of the electoral bonds encashed by political parties.
The petitioners Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) filed a contempt petition against the SBI plea. The CPI (M) also filed contempt pleas against SBI, for alleged wilful disobedience of SC order.
The Court had listed the matter for an urgent hearing for today.
Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal, Prashant Bhushan, and Shadan Farasat (for petitioners) were present in the court today.
Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta & Senior Advocate Harish Salve appeared before the court virtually.
Senior Advocate Harish Salve, appearing for the SBI told Supreme Court, “We need a little more time to comply with your lordships’ order. We are having to collate all the information.
Our process made sure that there was no correlation between the KYC, and bond numbers, Salve said.
The CJI said,” We have not told you to match donor KYC, with political parties. We have only asked for you to disclose the available details with the EC. SBI can simply comply with the judgement by disclosing available information,” Justice Chandrachud said.
He further added that ”grounds for seeking an extension do not exist. SBI has the KYC details, all details are available in the main branch of SBI.
SBI can simply open up the sealed covers and correlate the information”, the CJI said.
Harish Salve argued that we need to be able to match donor details with the political parties.
Justice Chandrachud asked Salve ”In the last 26 days, what progress has been made on matching”.
The CJI lashed out at SBI and said, “We passed the judgement on February 15, and today is March 11. What steps you have taken in the past 26 days? Nothing is stated by You, We expect some candour from the State Bank of India,” he said.
Justice Chandrachud said it is a very serious matter for SBI to apply for an extension in this manner.
SBI should have disclosed the extent of progress made with matching. We are given to understand, that there is a number assigned to electoral bonds, the CJI said.
Harish Salve replied that the number is kept a secret, and to generate the number needs to match the details. The bond number was not allowed into the core banking system, otherwise, the senior bank officer could have sourced information.
The Court said, that the Electoral Bonds scheme which was struck down by the top court last month itself stipulated that the information furnished by the buyer of such bonds shall be treated as confidential by the authorised bank and shall be disclosed when called upon to do so or registration of an offence by a law enforcement agency.
The Court noted that the SBI had authorised only 4 of its branches to accept the electoral bonds. Thus the details of Electoral Bonds encashed by Political parties will be available in these 4 branches only, the court noted and there should be no issue in collecting data as the slips etc will have to be deposited with the main bank, the court said.
Last month, the bench unanimously quashed the Electoral Bonds Scheme and directed the State Bank of India (SBI) to submit the details of the political parties that have received contributions up to April 12, 2019, through electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India (ECI).
The Court had ordered that details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties must be furnished by the SBI to the ECI by March 6.
The court directed the SBI to furnish details of each electoral bond purchased, the name of the purchaser, the denomination of electoral bonds, and details of each electoral bond redeemed by political parties including the date of encashment.
The ECI was to then publish this information on its official website within one week of receiving this information from the SBI.
However, the SBI then filed a petition before the Apex Court to extend the date to comply with the Apex Court orders till June 30. The Petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and the political party CPI (M) filed a contempt petition against the SBI ple in the Supreme Court.
The electoral bonds scheme allowed donors to anonymously send funds to a political party after buying bearer bonds from the State Bank of India (SBI).
It was introduced through the Finance Act, 2017, which in turn amended three other statutes – the Reserve Bank of India Act, the Income Tax Act and the Representation of People Act.
Various petitions were filed before the top court challenging at least five amendments made to different statutes through the Finance Act, 2017 on the ground that they have opened doors to unlimited, unchecked funding of political parties.
Nearly seven years later, the apex court rejected the Central government’s stance that the scheme was transparent.
The Court, in its order on February 15 held that such electoral bonds are not the least intrusive measure to curb black money, which was one of the government’s stated objectives in introducing the controversial scheme.
It, therefore, struck down the scheme and ordered that the details of electoral bonds be made public. (UNI)
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