SBI Urges SC To Extend Deadline For Sharing Electoral Bonds Data Till June 30

The State Bank of India (SBI) moved the Supreme Court on Monday seeking an extension of time till June 30, 2024, to furnish data on electoral bonds. The SBI said decoding the data is a complex process due to the stringent SoP adopted to secure donor information and hence more time is needed for the same. The current deadline is March 6.

SBI further informed the Supreme Court that from April 2019 till the date of judgment in 2024, a total of 22,217 electoral bond donations were received.

In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court on February 15, had struck down the electoral bonds scheme, calling it “unconstitutional” citing it violates the Constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression as well as the right to information.

ALSO READ: As Supreme Court Strikes Down ‘Unconstitutional’ Electoral Bonds, Here’s What It Means for Parties Ahead of 2024 Battle

Further, observing that information about funding to political parties is essential for electoral choices, the apex court had also directed SBI to not issue any more bonds and submit details of all such bonds purchased since its interim order of April 12, 2019, to the Election Commission.

The apex court had also ordered SBI to disclose to the Election Commission the names of the contributors to the six-year-old scheme.

A five-judge Constitution bench headed by CJI DY Chandrachud directed that the SBI must disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties and that the information should include the date of encashment and the denomination of the bonds. The SBI was required to submit the information to the poll panel by March 6.

“SBI shall furnish the details of donations through electoral bonds and the details of the political parties which received the contributions by March 6,” the court said.

The Election Commission should publish the information shared by SBI on its official website by March 13, the bench added.

What Are Electoral Bonds?

Electoral bonds allowed citizens to donate to political parties anonymously. The scheme was introduced in 2018, and since then political parties have collected huge amounts through this mode.

Politicians React to SBI’s Appeal

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called it Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “last attempt” to hide Modi’s ‘real face’ before the elections.

“When the Supreme Court has said that it is the right of the countrymen to know the truth about electoral bonds, then why does SBI want this information not to be made public before the elections?” Gandhi wrote in an X post.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi also took to microblogging site and wrote, “Of course. Want the election to be over before the financial earthquake hits. The money shouldn’t stop flowing for the party which benefited the most from electoral bonds.”