Judgment of the Constitution Bench required SBI to furnish to the ECI all details of the electoral bonds, CJI Chandrachud said.
The Supreme Court on Friday took exception to State Bank of India (SBI) not disclosing unique number of electoral bonds.
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“Judgment of the Constitution Bench required SBI to furnish to the ECI all details of the electoral bonds and redeemed, including the date of purchase, name of purchaser, and the date of purchase/redemption. It is submitted that SBI has not disclosed the unique alpha numeric number of the electoral bonds. SG submits that notice may be issued to the SBI,” Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud said while dictation the order.
The court further asked the registrar judicial of the apex court to ensure that documents are scanned and digitised and once the exercise is complete, the original documents shall be given back to the Election Commission and it will then upload it on the website on or before March 17.
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The Election Commission had sought modification of the operative portion of its March 11 order in the electoral bonds case.
The poll panel said the order had noted that copies of the documents submitted by it to the apex court in sealed cover during the course of hearing be maintained at the office of the Election Commission.
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The EC said it did not keep any copy of the documents and added that they may be returned so that it can comply with the court directions.
On April 12, 2019, the apex court had issued an interim order directing that the information of donations received and donations which will be received must be submitted by political parties to the EC in a sealed cover.
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.
The Election Commission on Thursday put out the entire list of entities that have purchased electoral bonds for making political donations.
The names include steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Airtel, Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, a lesser-known Future Gaming and Hotel Services, and Megha Engineering.
While it is already known that the ruling BJP received the highest amount of donation of more than Rs 6,000 crore followed by Congress party, the data dump only disclosed the amount donated by each entity or individual. It does not say who donated to which party.
Future Gaming, which was probed by the Enforcement Directorate in March 2022, bought electoral bonds worth over Rs 1,350 crore under two different sets of companies.
