Supreme Court Orders SBI to Provide Electoral Bond Details Tomorrow, Rejects Plea

Supreme Court Orders SBI to Provide Electoral Bond Details Tomorrow, Rejects Plea

The nation’s largest bank was directed by the Supreme Court to provide the Election Commission with the information about Electoral Bond by Tuesday, March 12, business hours, after the bank’s request for an extension of time to do so was denied on Monday. Additionally, the Supreme Court mandated that the poll panel post the data on its website by March 15 at 5 p.m. The managing director and chairman of SBI have been informed by the court that failure to comply with its order within the allotted time frame will result in contempt proceedings against them. A five-judge Constitution court struck down the Center’s electoral bonds program, which permitted anonymous political finance, in a historic decision rendered on February 15, declaring it to be “unconstitutional”.

The SBI was mandated by the Supreme Court to provide information about donors, their contributions, and the recipients by March 13. The SBI requested last Monday that the court extend the deadline for revealing the details of the bond until June 30. A bench made up of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra summoned up the bank today and asked it to explain what it had been doing over the last 26 days. “What actions have you taken in the past 26 days? The bench stated, “Your application is silent on that.”

The bench further said that all the SBI has to do is extract the data from the sealed cover, compile it, and send it to the Election Commission. Senior lawyer Harish Salve made an argument in court on behalf of the SBI, stating that the bank need more time to gather and compare the information since the data was kept in two different silos within its branches. He added that the SBI will require a minimum of three weeks to finish the task.

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The court stated that all it had asked for was a clear and simple declaration from SBI. When SBI requested an extension of the deadline earlier this month, Congressman Mallikarjun Kharge asserted that the BJP administration was using the bank as a front for its “dubious dealings.” “The BJP wants it completed after the Lok Sabha elections. The Modi government is hiding its questionable activities through Electoral Bonds by using the biggest bank in our nation as a cloak. This Lok Sabha’s term expires on June 16 and SBI wishes to release the data by June 30,” Kharge had stated.