A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud will also hear a separate plea, which has sought initiation of contempt action against the SBI
The Supreme Court on Monday will hear the State Bank of India’s request seeking an extension till June 30 to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties before the scheme was scrapped last month.
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A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud will also hear a separate plea, which has sought initiation of contempt action against the SBI alleging, it “wilfully and deliberately” disobeyed the apex court’s direction to submit details of the contributions made to political parties through electoral bonds to the Election Commission by March 6.
In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, a five-judge constitution bench scrapped the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordered disclosure by the Election Commission of the donors, the amount donated by them, and the recipients by March 13.
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The top court subsequently directed the SBI, the authorised financial institution under the scheme, to submit by March 6 the details of the electoral bonds purchased from April 12, 2019, till date to the Election Commission, which was asked to publish the information on its official website by March 13. On March 4, the SBI moved the apex court seeking an extension till June 30 to disclose the details of the electoral bonds encashed by political parties.
Here are the top developments on the matter so far.
- The Supreme Court bench, comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, will assemble at 10.30 am to hear the two petitions.
- The SBI contended 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 application said due to stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, “decoding” the electoral bonds and matching the donors to the donations would be a complex process.
- Later, a separate petition was filed in the apex court seeking initiation of contempt proceedings against the SBI for alleged disobedience of the apex court’s directives. The contempt plea, filed by NGOs Association for Democratic Reforms and Common Cause, claimed SBI’s application seeking extension of time has been deliberately filed at the last moment to ensure that details of donor and the amount of donations are not disclosed to the public before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
- It said as per clause 7 of the electoral bond scheme, information furnished by the buyer can be disclosed when demanded by a competent court. “As per clause 12 (4) of the scheme, electoral bonds have to be encashed within fifteen days failing which the amount of bonds not encashed are to be deposited by the bank to the PM relief Fund. Thus, it is inconceivable that SBI does not have the recorded information readily available within its data base,” it said.
- The plea said electoral bonds are “completely traceable” which is evident from the fact that SBI maintains a secret number-based record of donors who buy bonds and the political parties they donate to. The contempt plea said any form of anonymity in the finances of political parties goes against the essence of participatory democracy and people’s right to know enshrined under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
(With agency inputs)
