The State Bank Of Indian (SBI) moved the Supreme Court seeking an extension of the deadline set for making public the details of Electoral Bonds purchased since April 12, 2019, saying that no centralised database was maintained. The SBI submitted that due to the stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, “decoding” of the Electoral bonds and the matching of the donor to the donations made would be a complex process. It further told the court that the data related to the issuance of the bond and the data related to the redemption of the bond was kept recorded in two different silos.
The SBI moved the top court seeking time till June 30, 2024 to furnish the data on Electoral Bonds. The State Bank told the apex court that it intends to comply with the directions issued by it. However, there are certain "practical difficulties" with the decoding exercised and the timeline fixed for it.
Why SBI Asked For Extension Of Deadline From Supreme Court
The SBI told the court that the scheme mandated that the information furnished by the buyer shall be treated confidential by the authorised bank and shall not be disclosed to any authority for any purpose, except when demanded by a competent court or upon registration of a criminal case by any law enforcement agency. Following are reasons given by SBI to seek extension:
- In order to protect the donors anonymity and to maintain confidentiality, SBI laid down a detailed Standard Operating Procedure (‘SOP’) for 29 authorised Branches, spread all over India, with regard to sale and redemption of Electoral Bonds.
- The SBI explained that the Section 7.1.2 of the said SOP categorically provided: -“No details of Bond Purchaser including KYC and other details will be entered in CBS.” (Core Banking System).
- The details of purchases made at the SBI's branches are not maintained centrally at any one place, such as the name of Purchaser/Donor which could be tallied with Date of Issue, Place of Issue (Branch), Denomination of Bond, Bond Number.
- The data related to the issuance of the bond and the data related to the redemption of the bond was kept recorded in two different silos. No central database was maintained. This was done so as to ensure that donors’ anonymity would be protected.
- 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. On the other end, each political party was required to maintain a designated account in any of the 29 authorised Branches. It was only in this account that electoral bonds received by that party could be deposited and redeemed. At the time of redemption, the original bond, the pay-in slip would be stored in a sealed cover and sent to the SBI's Mumbai Main Branch.
- The SBI application says that both sets of information were being stored independently of each other. Thus, to re-match them would be a task requiring a significant amount of effort.
- In order to make available donor information, the date of issue of each bond will have to be checked, and matched against the date of purchase by a particular donor. This exercise would only deal with the first silo of information. These Bonds were redeemed by the Political Parties in their designated Bank accounts. Accordingly, this information would then have to be matched against the bond redemption information that makes up the second silo.
- 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.
- The details are stored separately, some of the details such as number of Bonds, etc. are stored digitally while the other set of details such as name of 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.
- The SBI also said that From April 12, 2019 to Feb 15, 2024, a total 22,217 electoral bonds were used for making donations to various political parties. Redeemed Bonds were deposited to Mumbai Main Branch by the Authorised Branches at the end of each phase in sealed envelopes. Coupled with the fact that two different information silos existed, this would mean that a total of 44,434 information sets would have to be decoded, compiled and compared.
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What Were the Supreme Court's Directions To SBI?
The Supreme Court on February 15 struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme 2018 as unconstitutional. The top court asked SBI to stop the issuance of Electoral Bonds and said that SBI shall submit details of the Electoral Bonds purchased since the interim order of this Court dated April 12, 2019 till date to the ECI.
The court said that the details shall include the date of purchase of each Electoral Bond, the name of the purchaser of the bond and the denomination of the Electoral Bond purchased. The details should also have a list of political parties which have received contributions through Electoral Bonds since the interim order of the top court dated April 12, 2019 till 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 the Electoral Bond. The SBI was asked to submit the above information to the ECI within three weeks from the date of the top court's judgment, that is, by March 6, 2024.
The ECI shall publish the information shared by the SBI on its official website within one week of the receipt of the information, that is, by March 13, 2024.
The court further said that Electoral Bonds which are within the validity period of fifteen days but that which have not been encashed by the political party yet shall be returned by the political party or the purchaser depending on who is in possession of the bond to the issuing bank.
The issuing bank, upon the return of the valid bond, shall refund the amount to the purchaser's account.