New Delhi: The State Bank of India’s (SBI’s) First Appellate Authority (FAA) has upheld the decision of the central public information officer (CPIO) to refuse disclosing a copy of the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) issued to the bank’s authorised branches for the sale and redemption of electoral bonds in response to a first appeal filed under the RTI act for seeking the information.
“In my view the CPIO has rightly denied the information sought by the appellant as the information sought is held by the Bank in its commercial confidence, and hence could not be provided. Further, the internal guidelines are strictly meant for the dealing staff and the information is also intellectual property of the Bank, hence rightly denied under section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act,” the FAA wrote in an order on May 17.
Transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj had sought the information by filing an RTI application on March 4, 2024 since it is still unclear how the public bank had maintained the data on transactions through the electoral bonds since the finance ministry suggested that anonymity of the donors will be maintained while the SBI allowed tracking of the bonds by recording the unique number both on the purchaser and redeemer side.
Citing section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act which states that “information including commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property, the disclosure of which would harm the competitive position of a third party, unless the competent authority is satisfied that larger public interest warrants the disclosure of such information” the FAA denied the indfrmation.
In a press note, Bharadwaj underlined that the FAA has “failed to demonstrate how the disclosure of the SOP would “harm the competitive position of a third party” and has also not disclosed who is the third party in the matter”.
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She added: “FAA has not weighed public interest in the matter and has blandly cited the document being an internal guideline to justify denial, even though there is no such exemption clause in the RTI Act.”
Further, Bharadwaj pointed out that the SOP was mentioned by the SBI in its application on March 4, 2024, when it sought additional time of four months to comply with the Supreme Court’s judgment to disclose the details of electoral bonds. “In order to protect the Donors anonymity and to maintain confidentiality/secrecy, the Applicant Bank has laid down a detailed Standard Operating Procedure (‘SOP’) for 29 Authorised Branches, spread all over India, with regard to Sale and Redemption of Electoral Bonds,” the SBI had stated.
Interestingly, the SOP had mentioned that, “no details of Bond Purchaser including KYC and other details will be entered in CBS [Core Banking System],” Bharadwaj noted, while “the disclosures revealed that the alphanumeric code was tagged with the purchase and redemption transaction of each bond” and therefore questions were raised on the manner in which the SBI was maintaining information since it was contrary to the claims made by the finance ministry.
Bhardwaj will now appeal against the decision in the Central Information Commission (CIC).
On February 15, the apex court had struck down the electoral bonds scheme, declaring it unconstitutional and saying that anonymous electoral bonds are violative of the right to information and Article 19(1)(a). The SBI had submitted the details related to the unique numbers of the bonds to the Election Commission of India only on March 21 as per the apex bank’s directions.
