SBI submits electoral bonds data to ECI day after SC order, when can you see them?

The State Bank of India (SBI) Tuesday submitted all electoral bonds data to the Election Commission of India (ECI) in compliance with the Supreme Court’s March 11 order.

According to Bar and Bench, SBI, the country’s largest lender, sent the details of electoral bonds to the poll body around 5:30 pm on Tuesday.

What’s next?

As per the apex court’s order, the ECI will upload all the data provided by the SBI on its Website by March 15, 2024, by 5 pm for the public.

Also, the election body will make public the electoral bonds filings which till now was only submitted to the Supreme Court in sealed covers.

Rs 16,518 crore Electoral Bonds issued since 2018

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Since the inception of the scheme in 2018, the SBI has issued electoral bonds worth Rs 16,518 crore in 30 tranches.

On Monday (March 11), SBI’s request seeking extension till June 30, 2024 to disclose details of electoral bonds encashed by political parties was dismissed by the Supreme Court.

The apex court instead ordered the bank to disclose details by the close of business hours of March 12.

A five-judge bench of SC, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, on Monday (March 11) had asked the SBI to do a “plain disclosure” as per the court’s judgment. The chairman and managing director of SBI was also asked to file an affidavit after the details were submitted and was warned of contempt action if the order was not complied with.

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On February 15, the Supreme Court, in a landmark verdict, scrapped the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme calling it “unconstitutional”. It ordered disclosure by the ECI of donors, the amount donated by them as well as the recipients.

The court, on March 11, also noted that SBI’s plea doesn’t disclose what has been done in the 26 days since its February 15 order. The SC also expressed its displeasure over a Assistant General Manager (AGM) filing an application to vary an order of the constitution bench.

The court had directed SBI to disclose details of electoral bonds by March 6. SBI, in its plea filed on March 4, contended that there are certain practical difficulties with the decoding exercise and the timeline fixed for it. The plea also mentioned that due to the stringent measures the bank had adopted to keep the names of the donors anonymous, “decoding” the electoral bonds and the matching of the donor to the donations made would be a ‘complex process’.

In its plea, the SBI also SBI informed the court that details of purchases of electoral bonds at the branches are not maintained centrally at any one place but in two different silos. “No central database was maintained. This was done so as to ensure that donors’ anonymity would be protected,” the bank said.

The bank told Supreme Court that, “retrieval of information from each silo and the procedure of matching the information of one silo to that of the other would be a time consuming exercise”. The bank even said donor details are kept in sealed covers, which are deposited in the main branch in Mumbai.

What are electoral bonds & why were they issues?

The first sale of electoral bonds happened in March 2018. They were introduced as a substitute for cash donations made to political parties with the aim of enhancing transparency in political funding.

Electoral bonds were to be redeemed exclusively by an eligible political party through an authorised bank account, and the SBI is the sole authorised bank for issuing these bonds.

With inputs from agencies