Electoral bonds case: SC to hear SBI's plea today seeking deadline extension

The Supreme Court will on March 11 hear the State Bank of India's plea seeking an extension of the deadline till June 30 to disclose details of the political parties who encashed electoral bonds before it was struck down by the top court last month.

A five-judge Constitution bench led by Chandrachud will hear the matter, along with another plea filed by the Association of Democratic Reforms seeking contempt proceedings against the bank for delay in furnishing the details.

The bench is expected to assemble at 10.30 am to hear the two petitions.

The SBI was earlier directed to issue all the necessary details after the court scrapped the Modi government's Centre's electoral bonds scheme of anonymous political funding, calling it "unconstitutional" on February 15.

In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, a five-judge constitution bench had scrapped the Centre's electoral bonds scheme of anonymous political funding, calling it "unconstitutional" and ordering disclosure by the Election Commission of the donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients by March 13.

Ordering closure of the scheme forthwith, the top court had directed the SBI, the authorised financial institution under the scheme, to submit by March 6 the details of the electoral bonds purchased since April 12, 2019 till date to the Election Commission which was asked to publish the information on its official website by March 13.

On March 4, the SBI had moved the apex court seeking extension of time till June 30 to disclose the details of the electoral bonds encashed by political parties.

In its application, the SBI has contended that 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 application said due to stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, "decoding' the electoral bonds and matching the donors to the donations made would be a complex process.

"It 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. No central database was maintained. This was done to ensure that donors' anonymity would be protected," it said.

"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," it said.

Also read | Contempt plea against SBI for failure to disclose details of electoral bonds