SBI wants to make the details of the electoral bonds public by June 30

The State Bank of India (SBI) filed an appeal with the Supreme Court on March 4, asking for an extension of time from March 6 to June 30, 2024, for the disclosure of information on electoral bonds redeemed by political parties, including the bond value and the date of encashment. The requested time extension by the SBI will ensure that details on the electoral bonds are made public after the Lok Sabha elections. Following the court’s April 12, 2019, interim verdict, the Supreme Court mandated on February 15 that the State Bank of India provide the Election Commission with a list of all electoral bonds that have been purchased.

The information has to include the buyer’s name, the date of purchase, and the denomination of each bond. In addition, the SBI is required to provide information on the political parties that have profited from contributions made via the bonds and the particulars of each bond that they have redeemed. The aforementioned data must be sent by the public sector bank to the European Commission by March 6, 2024, which is three weeks after the verdict on Thursday. The material provided by the SBI must be posted on the EC’s official website by March 13, 2024, or within a week of receipt, under the court’s order.

The request, which Moneycontrol was able to obtain, claims that SBI has acknowledged that the decoding process and the deadline it has been given have significant practical issues.

The SBI informed the Supreme Court that the “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 insider went on to say that “decoding” the electoral bonds and linking the donor to the contributions made would be a ‘difficult procedure’ due to the strict steps that they had implemented to keep the identity of the contributors unknown.

“On the other hand, every political party was obliged to keep a designated account in any of the 29 authorized branches,” the petition said. Only this account could be used to deposit and redeem electoral bonds the party had received. According to Moneycontrol, the original bond and pay-in-slip will be forwarded to the SBI Mumbai Main Branch and kept in a sealed cover till it is redeemed.

SBI told the Supreme Court in its reply that information about electoral bond purchases made by branches is not centrally maintained in one place, but rather in two distinct silos. “There was no centrally maintained database. This was carried out in order to guarantee the privacy of contributors,” the appeal said. “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 SBI said.

The argument said, “To the conclusion of each phase, authorized branches submitted redeemed bonds in sealed envelopes to the Mumbai Main Branch. When combined with the existence of two distinct information silos, this would imply that a total of 44,434 pieces of information were at stake.”

22,217 electoral bonds were transferred to various political parties between 2019 and February 2024, according to SBI data. According to ADR statistics, between March 2018 and January 2024, a total of Rs 16,518.11 crore was generated via the sale of electoral bonds.