The State Bank of India (SBI) told the Supreme Court that a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were purchased by political parties between April 1, 2019 and February 15 this year, out of which 22,030 were redeemed
The Election Commission of India on Thursday published electoral bonds data, received from the SBI, on its official website in compliance with the orders of the Supreme Court.
The data as received from SBI can be accessed at this URL: https://eci.gov.in/candidate-politicalparty
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In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, a five-judge Constitution bench had scrapped the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordered disclosure by the EC of donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients by March 13.
The State Bank of India (SBI) has told the Supreme Court that a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were purchased by political parties between April 1, 2019 and February 15 this year, out of which 22,030 were redeemed.
In a compliance affidavit filed in the apex court, the SBI said as per the court’s direction, it has made available the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India before the close of business hours on March 12. It said details, including date of purchase of each electoral bonds, names of the purchaser and the denomination of the bonds purchased have been furnished.
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The affidavit, filed by SBI’s chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara, said the bank has also furnished to the EC details like date of encashment of the electoral bonds, the names of political parties which received the contributions and the denominations of the bonds.
“A total number of 22,217 bonds were purchased during the period April 1, 2019 till February 15, 2024. At the time of collating the information for the ECI, the details were segregated as below…,” it said.
The affidavit said between April 1, 2019 to April 11, 2019, a total of 3,346 electoral bonds were purchased and 1,609 redeemed.
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NO EXTENSION TO SBI BY SC
On March 11, a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud had dismissed the SBI’s plea seeking an extension of time and ordered it to disclose the details of electoral bonds to the EC by close of business hours on March 12.
Ordering the closure of the scheme, the top court had directed the SBI, the authorised financial institution under the scheme, to submit by March 6 the details of the electoral bonds purchased since April 12, 2019, till date to the EC.
On March 11, while hearing SBI’s application seeking an extension of time till June 30 to furnish the details to the EC, the apex court had observed that the bank’s submissions in the application sufficiently indicated that the information which was directed to be disclosed was readily available.
In its application, the SBI had contended 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.
