After SBI data is out, activists may have to split hair to match dots!

New Delhi: Dismissing the State Bank of India's plea seeking an extension of time to furnish details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission, a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Monday clarified that it never asked the nationalised bank to release the data after matching different parts of the data.

The apex court directed SBI to hand over the details to the ECI by Tuesday, March 12, 2024.

Pronouncing the order of the bench, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud said, “The operative directions of this Court directed the SBI to disclose the transactions as set out in direction B and direction C. SBI submits in its application itself that the donor details and redemption details are available albeit in separate silos. In other words, the direction issued by this court require SBI to disclose information which is already available with it.”

During the hearing, CJI noted that if you see the direction we have issued, we have not told 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,” CJI said.

Senior advocate Harish Salve appearing for SBI asked the bench to clarify that correlating information is not needed.

To this, Justice Gavai said that the order dictated by my lord the Chief Justice of India is very clear.

Now, here is what the operating part of the February 15 judgment under directions B and C says.

(B) The State Bank of India shall submit the details of electoral bonds purchased since the interim order of the court dated April 12, 2019, to date to the Election Commission of India. 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.

(C) The State Bank of India shall submit the details of the political parties which have received contributions through electoral bonds since the interim order dated April 12, 2019, to date to the ECI. SBI must disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by the political parties, which shall include the date of encashment and the denomination of the electoral bond.

Going by the order of the top court, now all the corporates who purchased electoral bonds will be known to the public including the amount spent against the bonds.

On the other hand, the information about political parties encashing those bonds will be made public, which was already in the public domain.

However, no one will be able to know which corporate house gave funds to which political parties.

People would be left to keep guessing that most of the corporations would have bought BJP’s electoral bonds as the saffron party is the largest beneficiary.

At the same time, the details of the donors with their contributions will be made public by Friday evening.

While the political parties still remain protected as there is no new information that will come out as a result of the SC order, it is corporate houses whose names will come out with people guessing their contributions were towards a political party.