Don’t be picky; provide all bond information: Supreme Court to SBI

NEW DELHI: On Monday, the Supreme Court ordered the chairman of the State Bank of India to provide the Election Commission with access to all of the information that the bank possesses regarding the issuing and redemption of electoral bonds (EBS), including the bonds’ unique serial numbers and alphanumeric numbers, by Thursday at 5 p.m. After receiving the data from SBI, it requested that EC “forthwith upload the data.”

“The SBI chairman shall file an affidavit on or before 5pm on Thursday indicating that SBI has disclosed all details of the EBs that were in its possession and custody and that no details have been withheld from disclosure in order to fully effectuate the court’s Feb. 15 judgement and March 11 order and to avoid any controversy in the future,” the SC said.
A bench made up of CJI D Y Chandrachud, Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra chastised SBI for betraying the trust the Supreme Court had placed in the top public sector bank for a complete disclosure on EBs in compliance with its February 15 judgement and March 11 directives. The associations declined to entertain the objections of top industry associations Assocham, FICCI, and CII, which were concerned that the disclosure of invisible alphanumeric numbers embossed on the EBs could be abused by activist lawyers to file motivated PILs to harass industries and industrialists.
SBI’s request for an almost four-month extension of the March 6 deadline set in the February 15 ruling to provide all EB data to the EC was categorically denied by the SC on March 11, which also granted it thirty hours to comply. We trusted SBI to treat the court fairly and honestly. Why hasn’t SBI made all the information public? “You tell us to disclose a particular detail, and we’ll disclose it” seems to be SBI’s stance. The bench argued that the procedure was unfair.
This ruling is from the SC. As the chairman of SBI, it is your responsibility to follow the court’s ruling and provide any information held by the bank as instructed. The court said, “There cannot be any confusion as SBI has access to the best legal advice,” and sharply questioned senior attorney Harish Salve when he attempted to clarify the situation.
A lighthearted comment along the lines of “I I hope you are not arguing for the political parties” accompanied the critique. Salve, the bank’s attorney, was able to save face by stating that SBI’s delay was really the result of genuine uncertainty. He said unequivocally that SBI was prepared to thoroughly investigate and purge all of the EB-related data within its purview.
Salve said, “The Supreme Court addressed a number of issues in the ruling and found that, as is inherent in electoral trusts, a certain amount of anonymity should be preserved. SBI provided EC with all the information specified in the order, including the date of the EB purchases, the names and denominations of the donors, the political parties of the recipients, the dates of the redemptions, and the denominations. There is no issue if the numbers have to be provided; we will provide them.
Prashant Bhushan, a counsel for the petitioner, the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, said that all major political parties have omitted the identities of EB contributors, despite smaller parties disclosing them. He said that the court needss to order them to provide this information to the EC right now.
Bhushan added that although the bonds had been in place before then, information about the bonds bought and redeemed before April 19 also needed to be disclosed. SBI has only provided data regarding the purchase and redemption of EBs by donors and political parties, respectively, from April 19, 2019, onwards.
In rejecting both pleas, the Supreme Court stated that, on February 15, 2019, the five-judge panel deliberately decided to set April 19, 2019, as the deadline since that day was set for the first interim order requiring political parties to disclose donations made through EBs. “We will not review our own decision in these proceedings; changing the cut-off date after the judgement is rendered would be equivalent to doing so,” the bench said.
The bench dismissed the attendance of SBI’s chief general manager and deputy general manager, who were in the courtroom because of concern that the court might file a contempt case against them, at the request of SBI attorney Sanjay Kapur.