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SBI Electoral Bonds, SBI asked for time on Electoral Bonds, Rahul said – “An attempt to cover up corruption”

March 7, 2024

SBI Electoral Bonds:
State Bank of India (SBI) has requested the Supreme Court to extend the deadline for providing information about electoral bonds to the Election Commission till June 30. Now after the bank sought more time from the Supreme Court, the opposition has targeted the Modi government and alleged that the BJP is using our country’s largest bank as a shield to hide the transactions. Let us know why SBI has sought time from the Supreme Court and what are the reactions of other leaders?

SBI Electoral Bonds Details:

In a historic decision last month, the Supreme Court had canceled the Electoral Bond Scheme and asked SBI to provide information to the Election Commission (EC) by March 6. The Supreme Court struck down the controversial electoral bond scheme on the grounds that it violates citizens’ right to information. Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud had said that the electoral bond scheme was unconstitutional and arbitrary and could lead to a feeling of benefit in exchange for donations among political parties and donors. The Supreme Court had ordered SBI to stop issuing these bonds and give details of donations made through this medium to the Election Commission. After this, the Election Commission was asked to publish this information on its website by 13 March.

What did SBI say to the Supreme Court? SBI filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court on March 4 in this regard, in which the bank told the court that it wants to fully comply with the court’s instructions, but decoding the data and the time limit set for it will be required. There are some practical difficulties.” According to the BBC, the bank cited measures taken to conceal the identity of those purchasing electoral bonds. SBI said, “Strict measures have been followed to hide the identity of the buyers of electoral bonds. Now matching the information of its donors and the amount of electoral bonds they have purchased is a difficult process. To keep the identity of the electoral bond buyers confidential.” “For this, the Bank has prepared a detailed procedure for the sale and redemption of the bonds, which is followed in the 29 authorized branches of the Bank across the country.” “Every political party was required to maintain an account in any one of the 29 authorized branches. Only in this account the electoral bonds received by that party could be deposited and encashed.

The bank said that getting information from everywhere and matching the information from one place to another will be a time-consuming process. The information is stored in different places. In such a situation, he asked for more time from the court.

Opposition's Reaction:

The opposition has hit out at the ruling BJP and SBI after it sought more time from the Supreme Court to disclose details of electoral bonds encashed by political parties.

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge responded to SBI’s demand for time. they wrote-

“The Modi government is using our country’s largest bank as a shield to hide its suspicious transactions through electoral bonds. The Supreme Court of India has struck down the Modi government’s ‘black money conversion’ scheme of electoral bonds.” Terming it unconstitutional”, “violation of RTI” and “illegal” and asking SBI to submit donor details by March 6, BJP wants it to be done after the Lok Sabha elections. Tenure of this Lok Sabha “It will end on June 16 and SBI wants to share the data by June 30.”

Regarding this, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also targeted the BJP government by tweeting on March 4. He wrote – “Narendra Modi has put in all his strength to hide the ‘donation business’. When the Supreme Court has said that it is the right of the countrymen to know the truth about electoral bonds, then why does SBI want this information before the elections? Couldn’t it go public?

Asking for time till 30th June for information which can be obtained with one click shows that there is nothing black in the pulses, the entire pulses are black.”

Rahul Gandhi further said – “Every independent organization of the country is trying to cover up his corruption by becoming ‘Modani family’. This is the ‘last attempt’ to hide the ‘real face’ of Modi before the elections.”

Politics on electoral bonds:

Before the Lok Sabha elections, Congress is speculating that it will defeat BJP by creating some ruckus or demonstration. In this series, Congress is going to protest for two days regarding electoral bonds. Congressmen will protest in front of SBI branches on 6 and 7 March. Demonstrations will be held in all the districts on the instructions of AICC. There will be a demonstration against hiding the information about electoral bonds. Amidst all this, SBI has asked for time till June 30 instead of March 6.

Demand To Reveal Names Of Donors:

Let us tell you, SBI is being demanded to reveal the names of donors of electoral bonds. National President of Youth Congress Srinivas Biwi had said on this matter that the Supreme Court had banned electoral bonds on 15 February. At that time the Supreme Court had said that in a democracy, the public should know everything about who gave how much money, to which party. The Supreme Court had ordered SBI to make the names of electoral bond donors public by March 6, however, SBI has sought time from the Supreme Court till June 30. Therefore, it is believed that despite the order of the Supreme Court, SBI is not able to make this data public.

What has SBI said in its application:

In its decision of 15 February, the Supreme Court had ordered that by 6 March, SBI will have to submit the details of electoral bonds purchased between 12 April 2019 to 15 February 2024 to the Election Commission.

The court had said in the order that the details including the date of purchase of electoral bonds, the name of the donor, which party the donation has been made and the amount of donation, will be made public by the Election Commission by March 13.

Two days before the deadline given by the Supreme Court, SBI has sought an extension of four months from the court. In the petition, SBI said that between April 12, 2019 and February 15, 2024, 22,217 electoral bonds were issued to different parties.

SBI said that since the redeemed bonds were sent by authorized branches to the main SBI branch in Mumbai, it had to decode and compile 44,434 (22,217×2) data sets.

Was The Information Not Verified Earlier:

Experts have also questioned SBI’s claims of needing more time to verify the two data sets.

Professor Jagdeep Chhokar says, “Where political parties are encashing the donations received before the nominated branch, it will actually first undergo verification from the donor’s branch. So without verification from the donor’s branch, it seems strange that the political party is encashing the donations.” The branch will deposit that money into their account. It’s strange that those two records haven’t already been matched.”

RTI activist Commodore Lokesh Batra said that when SBI takes KYC details while issuing electoral bonds to a donor, it should have a digital record of it.
Commodore Lokesh Batra said, “They have data on who has bought the bond and which political party has encashed it. Today, where banks like SBI do millions of transactions across the world at high speed, it is not difficult to generate such data. The political party has a slip while encashing that bond.”
Lokesh Batra also pointed out that the net cost of the floating electoral bonds was disclosed in an SBI letter dated June 2018, which mentioned an allocation of over Rs 60,00,000 for ‘IT system development’.

Whereas both Chhokar and Batra indicated that the deadline fixed for providing the data may have been postponed till after the elections. Poonam Aggarwal says, “All these entries and data are recorded in real time. Since it is recorded in real time, the data must be compiled somewhere in some form or the other. It should be there because they will also need it for audit at the end of each financial year.” Questioning Poonam Agarwal, she says, “The records will be in 29 different branches. They just have to collect them, keep them in one place, file and hand them over to the Election Commission. Now, the issue is that even if it takes three days “Who will decide exactly whether it will take three weeks or three months?”