SC asks SBI to disclose electoral bond details by 12 March
- The top court also ordered the Election Commission to publish details of the information related to bonds, previously submitted in a sealed cover to the court, on its website by 15 March
New Delhi: Pointing out that State Bank of India does not need to match names of electoral bond buyers with specific political parties, the Supreme Court on Monday rejected the bank’s plea for more time to disclose details of the bonds.
The apex court directed SBI to share the required information by the close of business hours on 12 March (today).
The five-judge bench, led by chief justice D.Y. Chandrachud, also sought an affidavit from the bank’s chairman and managing director Dinesh Kumar Khara regarding compliance with the directions issued, signalling that contempt proceedings may ensue if the deadline is not met.
The court said the information on purchasers of electoral bonds, the denomination of the bonds, and the bonds redeemed by the respective political parties are easily available and do not need matching.
The top court also ordered the Election Commission of India (ECI) to publish the details of the bonds, previously submitted in a sealed cover to the court, on its website by 15 March. The details include particulars of the donors corresponding to each bond; the amount of each bond; and comprehensive information regarding the credit received against each bond, such as the particulars of the bank account where the amount has been credited and the date of each credit transaction.
The bench noted that the FAQs provided by SBI indicated that the data, including know-your-customer (KYC) documents and information about political parties, is readily available with the bank.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, representing SBI, sought more time to share the information, citing difficulties in correlating donor details with the details of political bonds cashed. Salve said some of the information had been kept physically in different silos rather than digitally, making the correlation process challenging.
The electoral bond scheme was supposed to be secretive, which is why the data never made it into the SBI system, Salve said, claiming that a cautious approach was needed, as donors might sue the bank in case of mistakes.
In response, chief justice Chandrachud said the court’s directions did not require the bank to conduct a ‘matching exercise’ but simply to disclose the information.
“Our judgement is dated 15 February. Today is 11 March. In the last 26 days, what is the extent of matching done by you? The affidavit is silent on this. We expect a degree of candour from the State Bank of India,” remarked the chief justice.
Another judge on the bench, justice Sanjiv Khanna, too, criticized SBI. “There is no question of any mistake. You have the KYC. This is the number 1 bank in the country. We expect them to be able to handle this,” he remarked.
However, according to experts, this order provides a breather for the government, as the Supreme Court has asked SBI to only provide two separate sets of details: the name of the purchaser of electoral bonds, and the denomination of the bonds redeemed by the respective political parties, without stressing upon matching up the data of the purchaser to the political party.
“No doubt that the order passed by the Supreme Court restricting the nature of information to be collated and released does in fact provide the government with a breather. No political party would want a disclosure of those who have been benevolent to its cause,” said Rohini Musa, advocate on record, Supreme Court of India.
According to Smiti Tewari, partner, Khaitan Legal Associates, the Supreme Court clarification that the SBI is not required to match the donor to the donation ought to have come as a relief to SBI. “However, the question then arises is if the SBI were to simply provide data to the ECI, would it then be upon the ECI to match the donor to the donation, as without the matching, the purpose of the disclosure would not be served,” she said.
Arjun Rajgopal, partner at Saraf and Partners, said that due to the negotiable and transferable nature of these bonds, it was difficult to trace the bond's ownership trail from the purchaser to the political party cashing it, and to determine if the purchaser was the actual contributor or acting on behalf of another entity. He said it wasn't clear if even SBI possessed this information.
The unanimous judgement by the constitution bench on 15 February marked the end of the controversial electoral bonds scheme. The court had directed SBI to provide details of bond buyers, purchase dates, and donation amounts to the ECI by 6 March and asked the EC to publish this information on its website by 13 March.
However, SBI failed to disclose the information by the set deadline and filed a plea for an extension until 30 June. The SBI stated in its plea that it needs more time as between 12 April 2019 and 15 February 2024, a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were utilized for donations to various political parties.
According to SBI, redeemed bonds were deposited at the Mumbai Main branch by authorized branches, each in sealed envelopes, at the culmination of every phase. The complexity of the situation is further heightened by the presence of two distinct information silos, necessitating the meticulous decoding, compilation, and comparison of a total of 44,434 information sets, it added.
On 7 March, the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Communist Party of India (Marxist), filed pleas seeking to initiate contempt proceedings against SBI and its chairman for not complying with the court’s deadline of 6 March to disclose the electoral bond details.
Introduced in the 2017 Union budget, the electoral bonds scheme allowed citizens and companies to anonymously donate any amount to political parties. While the government argued that donors’ anonymity was meant to prevent retribution, critics said it violated citizens’ right to know how political parties were being funded.
The total amount donated to political parties through electoral bonds between March 2018 and January 2024 stood at ₹16,518.11 crore, according to ADR, one of the petitioners in the case.
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First Published:11 Mar 2024, 01:29 PM IST
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