Poll bond details delay: SC to consider contempt petition against SBI chief

court and instead asking for more time.advocateprashantbhushan, appearing for the ADR, urged the bench presided by Chief Justice of Indiadychandrachudtohearthe pleaonmarch11whenhesaidthe SBI application too is likely to be taken up.

CJI Chandrachud asked Bhushan to send an email to the court as per the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). He said once the petition is verified bytheregistry,hewilllookintoit.

Deciding a petition by ADR and some others, a 5-judge Constitution Bench struck down the electoral bond scheme on February 15 and asked the SBI to furnish the details of the bonds purchased since April 12, 2019, to the ECI by March 6.

But in an application filed on March 4, the SBI sought time until June 30 to furnish the details, saying it is a “time consuming exercise” as there are “certain practical difficulties with the decoding exercise… due to the stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous”.

Referring to the SBI application, the ADR petition said it is “mala fide and demonstrates a wilful and deliberate disobedience and defiance of the judgement passed by the Constitution Bench”.

The plea contended that SBI “has deliberately filed” the application “at the last moment in order to ensure that the details of donors and the amount of donations are not disclosed to the public before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections” and that it “neither discloses the progress made so far and steps taken to comply with the judgement… nor it shows even part-compliance of the judgement”.

The ADR said the affidavit supporting the application has “neither been sworn by the Chairman or the Managing Director of State Bank of India” but by a “low-level functionary of SBI namely one Mr Narendra Pratap Singh who describes himself as Assistant General Manager working at Corporate Centre, State Bank of India, Mumbai”.

“It is surprising that his name does not even figure in the list of 59 high-ranking officers working at Corporate Centre Mumbai as per SBI’S website,” the petition stated.

Itclaimedthatthe“sbihasthe record of the unique number allotted to each Electoral Bond and the KYC details of its purchaser. That the requirement of the KYC is mentioned in Section 4 of the Ebschemeitself,therefore,thesbi iswellawareoftheidentityofpurchasers of each Electoral Bond”.

The ADR said it is “inconceivable that SBI does not have the recorded information readily available within its database”.

The ADR said the Centre, in its affidavit of March 15, 2019, had statedthat“theschemeenvisages building a transparent system of acquiring bonds with validated KYC and on audit trail. It is further admitted by UOI that KYC documents, PAN, details of identity, and address in full of the donor are recorded by the SBI”.

The petition said that as per experts“sinceeachelectoralbond has a unique number, a simple query on the database can generate a report in a particular format which does not require any manual verification. That sealed envelopes are only physical instruments like a cheque, the actual transaction of the cheque being deposited is in the database that can be easily extracted by generating a software query”.

In the petition, the ADR also pointed out that SBI’S website shows it has 2,60,000 employees, 22,500 worldwide branches administered by a headquarters, 17 local head offices, 101 zonal offices and 208 foreign offices in 36 countries and “it is hard to believe that SBI is not able to gather information which SBI has itself recorded”.

It said an RTI query had shown that the Bank had “spent Rs 60,43,005 on IT system development” for management of the bonds, operational cost was Rs 89,72,338 and net cost for floating of EBS was Rs 1,50,15,338. “This implies that a well-functioning IT system is already in place with respect to management of sale and redemption of electoral bonds,” it stated.

Pointingoutthatonly19ofthe 29 SBI authorised branches sold thebondsand14sbibranchesencashed them, it said “data available as of January 2024 further shows that only 25 political partieshadopenedtheiraccountand areeligibleforencashingelectoral Bonds” and “therefore, compiling of this information should not be difficultasthesystemisalreadyin place”.

“It is mandatory that SBI furnishes all information relating to electoral bonds within stipulated time frame… as voters will not be able to exercise their informed opinion properly during Lok Sabha 2024 if complete information about EBS is not shared with them,” it stated.

“Anyformofanonymityinthe political parties’ finances goes against the essence of participatory democracy and People’s Right to Know enshrined under Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution. Availability of information about EBS will give voters a chance to truly inspect, express anddecidetheirchoices,”itstated.

The ADR said “this defiant approachofthesbitowardscitizens’ ‘Right to Know’ about huge sums of money received by parties through Electoral Bonds and corporates in a non-transparent and unaccountable manner is reprehensible and betrays its clear motive to stifle citizen’s voice and right to audit actions of the political class, and therefore it should be held as a serious breach of contempt by this Hon’ble Court”.