Congress questions ‘hide and seek’ over electoral bonds data
Party criticises SBI for seeking more time from the SC to furnish details of bonds; it says PM is terrified of ‘revealing his corporate donors to people’
Hitting out at the State Bank of India (SBI) for seeking more time from the Supreme Court to disclose details on electoral bonds, the Congress on Thursday asserted that the bank’s arguments were flawed, and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “absolutely terrified of revealing his corporate donors to people”.
Asked to furnish data on the electoral bond scheme by March 6 by the Supreme Court, the SBI had approached the top court for time until June 30 to make the data available. “Hide and seek in New India: Nation seeks, Modi hides!,” Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said in statement posted on social media platform X.
The former Union Minister said the SBI’s request for extension was “conveniently timed for after the upcoming Lok Sabha elections”. “The SBI’s excuse was that its data on sale and encashment of electoral bonds is decoupled to maintain anonymity. According to the SBI, it would take months to match the buyers of the 22,217 electoral bonds issued since 2019 with the beneficiary parties. However, we know that each electoral bond was sold with two conditions 1. Detailed Know Your Customer (KYC) exercise by the SBI branches to identify the buyer 2. Hidden serial numbers on the bonds,” the Congress leader said.
In 2018, the Congress leader claimed, the SBI was able to identify the number and date of purchase of expired bonds when a political party tried to encash these expired bonds.
“The man who famously said na khaunga, na khaane dunga [won’t be corrupt nor allow corruption] is now insisting on na bataunga, na dikhaunga [won’t tell, won’t show],” Mr. Ramesh alleged.