Says Congress, “Desperate” As SBI petitions the SC on electoral bonds, the Modi government is clinging to hope

The Congress blasted the Centre on Tuesday, claiming that the Modi administration is hiding its “dubious dealings” behind the nation’s biggest bank by asking the Supreme Court to provide further time for the disclosure of electoral bond data.

The State Bank of India (SBI) filed a request with the Supreme Court on Monday, requesting an extension till June 30th, to reveal the specifics of every election bond that political parties have redeemed. The top court ordered the SBI to provide the information to the poll panel by March 6 in its ruling last month.

The Congress views the electoral bonds plan as “opaque, undemocratic, and destroyed the level playing field,” according to Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.

“Modi government is using the largest bank of our country as a shield to hide its dubious dealings through Electoral Bonds,” he said.

The Modi government’s “black money conversion scheme” of Electoral Bonds was invalidated by none other than the Supreme Court of India, which ruled that it was “illegal,” “unconstitutional,” and “violative of RTI.” The court also ordered SBI to provide donor information by March 6.

“But, the BJP is in favor of finishing it after the Lok Sabha elections. SBI wants to disclose the data by June 30th, and the current Lok Sabha’s term ends on June 16th,” Kharge said.

He said that the primary benefactor of this “fraudulent scheme” is the BJP.

“Isn’t the government conveniently hiding the BJP’s shady dealings where contracts of highways, ports, airports, power plants etc. were handed over to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cronies in lieu of these opaque electoral bonds,” queried the politician.

“Experts estimate that it will only take a day to reveal and match the 44,434 automatic donor data entries. “Then, why does the SBI require an additional four months to gather this data?” he questioned.

“The Congress party made it quite evident that the Electoral Bonds program undermined fairness and was opaque and undemocratic. However, Kharge said that in order to enrich the BJP, the Modi administration, PMO, and FM “bullied every institution, including the RBI, Election Commission, Parliament, and Opposition.”

“Now a desperate Modi Govt, clutching on straws, is trying to use SBI to bulldoze the Supreme Court’s judgment!” he said.

Manish Tewari, a Congress MP, also criticized the administration and pleaded with the Supreme Court to reject the SBI’s appeal. “Supreme Court should not allow @TheOfficialSBI to get away with its chicanery on Electoral Bonds,” Tewari said on X.

“People before the General Elections must know who got what from whom & whether there was any prima-facie quid pro quo involved?” he said.

Tewari said that the “corporate veil of SPV’s called electoral trusts must be lifted to reveal the true identity of the donor” by an order from the Supreme Court.

A “last-ditch attempt” to conceal Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “real face” ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, according to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, was how the administration was criticized on Monday.

Gandhi had said, “Narendra Modi has put his entire force in order to hide the ‘donation business'” in a Hindi post on X.

“When the Supreme Court has stated that it is the right of the people of the country to know the truth about electoral bonds, then why does the SBI not want this information to be made public before the elections?” questioned the former leader of the Congress.

SBI argued that it would take a lot of time to get information from “each silo” and match one silo’s information to another in an application that was submitted to the highest court.

The petition said that “decoding” the electoral bonds and linking contributors to the contributions made would be a difficult procedure because of the strict precautions put in place to guarantee that the donors’ identities remained unknown.

“The argument is made that records for the bond’s issue and redemption were maintained in two distinct silos. There was no central database kept up to date. This was done to guarantee the privacy of the contributors.

“It is submitted that donor details were kept in a sealed cover at the designated branches and all such sealed covers were deposited in the main branch of the applicant bank, which is located in Mumbai,” the motion said.

The Supreme Court struck down the electoral bonds program for political financing on February 15, declaring that it breaches the Constitution’s guarantees of the right to information and freedom of speech and expression. This decision dealt a severe blow to the administration.

The top court directed SBI to provide the identities of the donors to the six-year-old plan to the Election Commission in its ruling, which was rendered months before the Lok Sabha elections.

Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud led a five-judge Constitution panel that ordered the SBI to provide information on every electoral bond that political parties redeemed. By March 6, the poll panel should receive the information, which should include the date of encashment and the denomination of the bonds.