SC rejects SBI plea for time until Jun 30 to disclose details of electoral bonds
Supreme Court warned the SBI chairman and managing director of being proceeded against for contempt if the order was not complied with within the timeline
A five-judge Supreme Court bench on Monday dismissed an application by the State Bank of India (SBI) seeking time until June 30 to submit details of electoral bonds (EBs) purchased since April 12, 2019, to the Election Commission of India (ECI), noting that the required information is “readily available” with the state-owned bank, and giving SBI time until the business hours of March 12 to do so. In turn, the ECI will make public the information submitted by SBI by posting such details on its website by 5pm on March 15, the court ordered.
The court order did not provide any clarification or explicit instruction to SBI for providing information to the ECI following the correlation of donor data with political party affiliations, making it unclear whether the bank must complete the exercise of matching donors to recipients before sharing the data. While most of the information about political parties’ EB redemptions is already available to the public, the related donor data is not.
Under the February 15 judgment of the court, SBI was supposed to submit details of EBs to the ECI by March 6 but the bank sought an extension of time, claiming that “decoding” the data and matching donors to recipients would be a “complex process”.
Rejecting the SBI’s plea, the bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud held on Monday that “the information which has been directed to be disclosed by the court is readily available” with the bank and that there is no reason why the extension application should be entertained.
“SBI is directed to disclose the details by the close of business hours on March 12, 2024. We further direct that the ECI shall compile the information and publish the details on its official website by no later than 5 pm on March 15, 2024,” directed the bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
The bench added that the ECI will also put on its website another set of information about EBs that the poll body received from political parties in the wake of the court’s direction on November 2. On that day, the ECI was directed to provide the court with comprehensive information on donations received by political parties through EBs by September 30.
Asking the SBI’s chairman and managing director (CMD) to submit his affidavit of compliance, the top court warned the bank of being proceeded against under the contempt charge for “wilful disobedience” if the bank failed to adhere to the direction and the timeline set down in the Monday order.
Nevertheless, the court order did not give SBI any specific instructions or clarification to disclose information to the ECI after linking donor data to political parties, which was the main reason SBI requested an extension of time.
Senior advocate Harish Salve, representing the bank, argued that SBI has information ready in two separate silos in so far as details of EBs purchased and redemption of bonds by political parties are concerned. According to Salve, matching the information to ascertain who contributed to which political party was a time-consuming process, and thus, the plea for an extension until June 30 was moved.
Responding, the bench criticised SBI for not disclosing in its extension plea whether the bank has started the exercise of collating the details.
“There should have been a degree of candour on the part of SBI to tell us as to what extent the work is done and what’s remaining. Our judgment is dated February 15. It has been 26 days since then, but your application is completely silent on what you have done to date...you are the number one bank in the country. We expect you to be able to handle this,” it told Salve.
Even as the Constitution bench proceeded to reject SBI’s plea and read the EB scheme together with the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) put by SBI on its website to note that the bank already has details of the purchasers of the bonds as well as redemption by political parties, it did not address whether the bank must provide information to the ECI only after matching donors to the recipients of EBs.
The court merely recalled the part of its February 15 judgment which directed that SBI shall submit details of EBs, which will include the date of purchase of each EB, the name of the purchaser of the bond, and the denomination of the bond. “SBI shall submit the details of political parties which have received contributions through Electoral Bonds since the interim order of this Court dated 12 April 2019 to date to the ECI. SBI must disclose details of each Electoral Bond encashed by political parties which shall include the date of encashment and the denomination of EB,” the February judgment stated. On Monday, the bench said that SBI must comply with these two directions.
Asked by Salve whether the bank needs to complete the matching exercise first, one of the judges on the bench said: “We haven’t asked you to do the matching exercise...You simply comply with our judgment.”
Along with the SBI’s extension plea, the bench also disposed of applications by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and CPI (M), petitioners in the case that had moved the court demanding that the state-owned bank be held in contempt for disobeying the court’s order regarding submission of details to the ECI.
The five-judge bench had on February 15 struck down the Centre’s 2018 EB scheme of political funding, declaring it to be “unconstitutional” because it completely anonymised contributions made to political parties. It added that restricting black money or illegal election financing -- some of the articulated objectives of the scheme -- did not justify violating voters’ right to information in a disproportionate manner.
The bench directed SBI, the only designated EB-issuing bank, to stop the issuance of EBs, adding that the bank should submit details of EBs purchased since April 12, 2019, until that date to the poll watchdog by March 6. By March 13, the judgment ordered all funding received by political parties—since the court issued an interim direction to parties to submit such information with ECI—to be made public on ECI’s website.
Moving a plea on March 4, SBI claimed it needs to break down the details of 22,217 EBs, which would involve decoding, compiling, and comparing 44,434 information sets because the details relating to buyers and recipients of bonds are kept in two different information silos.
ADR’s contempt plea on Thursday last week labelled the request as “mala fide” and an attempt to thwart transparency efforts before the upcoming elections.
ADR said that SBI India possesses the necessary infrastructure to swiftly compile and disclose information on electoral bonds. “SBI’s IT system, designed for managing electoral bonds, is already in place and can easily generate reports based on the unique numbers assigned to each bond... the bank has records of the unique numbers allotted to each electoral bond and the Know Your Customer (KYC) details of purchasers,” stated the plea. Adding that SBI has a vast network of branches and a well-functioning IT system, the contempt plea said the bank can compile data for about 22,217 EBs easily.
Stressing the significance of transparency in political financing, ADR argued that voters have a fundamental right to know about the substantial sums of money contributed to political parties through EBs and that the lack of transparency goes against the essence of participatory democracy enshrined in Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
In its extension plea, SBI sought to bring to the court’s notice “certain practical difficulties with the decoding exercise and the timeline fixed for it”. The public sector bank said that not only were details of purchases made at SBI branches not maintained centrally but the data related to the issuance of the bond and the data related to the redemption of the bond were also recorded in two different silos.
“No central database was maintained. This was done so as to ensure that donors’ anonymity would be protected. 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 plea said.
SBI said that, at the time of redemption by a political party, the original bond, and the pay-in slip would be stored in a sealed cover and sent to the SBI’s main branch in Mumbai.
SBI also said that some of the details such as the number of bonds, etc are stored digitally while the other set of details such as the name of the purchaser, KYC, etc are stored physically. “The purpose of not storing all details digitally was to ensure that it cannot be gathered easily to achieve the object of the scheme,” claimed the plea, adding the timeline of three weeks fixed by the court in its February 15 judgment would not be sufficient for the entire exercise to be completed.