SC Gives SBI A Day To Furnish Electoral Bonds Data, Warns Of Contempt Proceedings On Non-Compliance

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the application filed by the State Bank Of India (SBI) seeking more time to furnish Electoral Bonds data.

The SBI has sought time till June 30, 2024 to furnish the data on Electoral Bonds. The SBI has sought time till June 30, 2024 to furnish the data on Electoral Bonds. 

Source : PTI, Getty

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the application filed by the State Bank Of India (SBI) seeking more time to furnish Electoral Bonds data. The court also dismissed the contempt petition moved by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) against SBI as an application was filed by SBI in court before the deadline. However, it warned the state bank of contempt action if it fails to comply with today's court order. The court then asked the SBI to furnish data till March 12.

The court also directed the Election Commission Of India (ECI) to publish data on its website by March 15.

While hearing the case, the court grilled SBI and asked it several questions on the prayers it made in its application seeking an extension of the deadline to furnish the data. 

While reading out the application filed by the SBI, the CJI DY Chandrachud said that if you see the directions we have issued, we have not asked you to do the matching exercise. We have directed a plain disclosure. So, to seek time saying that a matching exercise is to be done is not warranted, we have not directed you to do that.

Justice Sanjiv Khanna said that you just have to open the sealed cover and give details. He also said that the top court had asked the  Election Commission to file an affidavit in the court about the funds received by the political parties in a sealed cover that the court has not opened yet. And the court might ask that envelop to be opened.

CJI then asked the counsel appearing for SBI as to why the application is silent on what they have done until now. He said that the SBI had to make disclosure on March 6, and the judgment was passed on February 15. "What has SBI done in the last 26 days?" 

Senior Advocate Harish Salve then said that he can file an affidavit on that if the court directs. He also said that the SBI is afraid it might be sued if it makes a mistake in matching the data.

At this point Justice Khanna said that you are accepting that the only difficulty is matching.

"Even your FAQs indicated that for every purchase that you had to have a separate KYC. So, every time a purchase was made, KYC was mandated." the CJI said.

Justice Khanna said that "you say all purchaser details are kept in a sealed cover. You just need to open the sealed cover and give the details."

Salve told the court that SBI has full details of who purchased the bond which is there in one silo. I have another set of information of which political party encashed, that is not a problem. 

Justice Gavai then said that the top court has not asked SBI to correlate it with the purchaser and the political party. 

Salve then told the court that it is suggested in a paragraph. On this, Justice Gavai said, "don't go by what is suggested, go by what is stated."

The court passed the order saying that the details of the bonds which have been purchased are readily available with the SBI.

The SBI had submitted that since donor information and redemption information are maintained in two different silos, it needed more time to decode. And asked for time till June 30, 2024.

"By a Judgement dated 15 Feb 2024, this court declared the Electoral Bond Scheme and provisions of Finance Act 2017 which amended the RPA 1951 and thet Income Tax Act 1961 unconstitutional on the ground that the non-disclosure of information of funding of political parties is violative of RTI under Article 19. The amendments introduced to the Companies Act was held to be arbitrary and violative of Article 14 of Constitution...In order to give full effect to the judgement the Supreme Court directed SBI to submit the details of the electoral bonds purchased by the contributors and redeemed by political parties between April 12, 2019 till 15 Feb 2024." the CJI said while dictating order.

The SBI filed an application in the top court seeking extension and ADR and CPM filed a contempt case against the SBI.

Senior Advocate Harish Salve appearing for SBI submitted that the information which was received by the state bank was maintained in two separate silos and were maintained with utmost secrecy so as to fulfill the purpose of the electoral bonds scheme.

 

He submitted that if the disclosure is to be made of the information required to be submitted by the SBI to ECI in separate silos which are referred to in B and C of the operative directions, there would be no difficulty in SBI doing so, which has been indicated would be completed within 3 weeks.

 

The court also noted that the Clause 7 of the Electoral Bond scheme stipulates that the information furnished by a buyer of the Electoral Bond shall be treated as confidential and shall be disclosed only when called upon to do so by a competent court or by a registration of offence by a law enforcement agency.

 

"Thus, in terms of the provisions of the electoral bonds scheme itself SBI is mandated to disclose information when mandated by a Court." the court noted.

A five-judge bench headed by CJI DY Chandrachud and comprising Justice JB Pardiwala, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, Justice BR Gavai, and Justice Manoj Misra heard the matter.

Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan on Thursday told the Supreme Court that the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has filed a contempt petition against SBI for willfully and deliberately disobeying the judgment passed by the Constitution Bench of the top court.

Later, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) also filed a contempt petition against SBI over non-disclosure of Electoral Bonds information.

Last week, the SBI filed an application in the top 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 has sought time till June 30, 2024 to furnish the data on Electoral Bonds. 

In its application, the SBI 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.
 
The state bank submitted 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. It further told the court 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.