New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday (March 15) morning issued notice to the State Bank of India for not releasing the bond numbers in the electoral bond data submitted to the Election Commission of India, which the EC made public on Thursday.
As The Wire has reported, the nature of the data uploaded to the ECI’s website makes it rather difficult to infer whether there were any quid pro quo dealings between companies which bought the bonds and different governments. The commission uploaded two sets of data. One file contains a date-wise list of bond purchases by companies and the other file contains a date-wise list of deposits by political parties that encashed the bonds. Without the bond numbers being made available in either list, it was not possible to cross-verify which company or individual was donating to which party.
Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud asked for the SBI’s representative, who was not present, to answer for this unavailability of data. The court was hearing an application from the Election Commission on return of documents which ha been shared with the court in a sealed envelope. “We can ask the office to scan and digitise the data, it may take a day…as soon as the data is scanned, the originals will be returned to the ECI,” the CJI said on this, according to LiveLaw.
Then, the CJI himself brought up the matter pertaining to the lack of complete data released by the SBI. “Who is appearing for the SBI? They have not disclosed the bond numbers. It has to be disclosed by the State Bank of India,” he said, according to LiveLaw. “All details have to be published by the State Bank of India.”
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal read out the operative part of the court’s earlier judgment, which said that all relevant details had to be published by the SBI.
The Supreme Court had said in its judgment striking down the electoral bonds scheme that voters have the right to know whether there have been any quid pro quo arrangements between parties in government and business houses or corporate interests.
As The Wire has reported, several of the companies listed as big purchasers of electoral bonds have been under the scanner of central agencies and faced cases and raids. Other reports have also pointed out that some companies have bought electoral bonds worth much more than their annual profits.
