SBI plea seeking time till June 30 is condemnable: Chidambaram

Senior Congress leader and former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Saturday strongly condemned State Bank of India’s plea seeking time till June 30 to comply with a Supreme Court direction to make public the details of electoral bonds purchased since April 2019.

These details, Mr. Chidambaram said, could be compiled in a day. The Central government did not want the details to come out before the elections, he alleged, adding: “It is condemnable that the largest bank, SBI, is acting in favour of the government. The case is coming up before the Supreme Court on March 11. I hope the apex court will deliver a good verdict,” he told reporters at Sathyamurthy Bhavan, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee’s Headquarters in Chennai.

To a question on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s frequent visits to Tamil Nadu, Mr. Chidambaram asked why the Prime Minister was not talking about issues such as unemployment, price rise and the delay in AIIMS Madurai project.

“From February to

March 7, Mr. Modi has announced projects worth ₹5.90 lakh crore, out of which ₹17,300 crore is for Tamil Nadu. He will announce many more [projects] before the election dates are announced. But I don’t see any allocations made in the Union budget for these projects,” he said.

Mr. Chidabaram said the BJP had not fulfilled many of its poll promises. The Prime Minister had announced a reduction in domestic LPG prices by ₹100 a cylinder, but he should have announced that the prices would not be increased, if he came back to power, he added.