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As some public-spirited citizens, knowledgeable in the ways of banking, have made bold to say, this is a moment for the country’s largest bank to salvage its credibility as a financial institution that the ordinary citizen may continue to trust.
The top brass of the State Bank of India surely must be aware of the all-important stipulation enunciated by the Supreme Court.
The top court has in no uncertain terms held that the casting of a vote of credible value by the citizen is intimately related to her knowledge of the funding of the political protagonists vying for power.
The court has minced no words in laying down that the citizen’s right to information in this matter, more than most, is a sine qua non of a trustworthy democracy.
Indeed, happily, an otherwise corporate-friendly leading daily has put the matter succinctly, and without hemming and hawing, at a time when most “mainstream” media outlets seem too “cabined, cribbed, and confined” (borrowing from Macbeth) to come out with courage in favour of the democratic right and proper
If the top court had stipulated certain dates for the SBI to make the requisite disclosures of bonds bought and donated, it was clearly with a view to furnishing such information to the citizen in a given context.
Clearly, the idea has to have been to enable the disclosures before a code of conduct set in following the announcement of elections to the next Lok Sabha.
Thus, the bank’s malingering fools nobody, in that the date of disclosure demanded by it, namely, June 30, is cannily chosen; by then the said elections will be done and dusted, with nobody any the wiser.
However much the bank may plead that no such motive attaches to its modus operandi, free-thinking and fair-minded citizens know otherwise.
As The Indian Express has editorially remarked, citizens who seek a republic that results from a “free and fair” exercise of choice, need to have the information hidden away in electoral bonds in order to make that “free and fair” determination, one way or another.
Such citizens will thus look to the Supreme Court yet again to put its constitutional foot down with firm conviction when the appeal for delaying disclosure comes up before it on March 11.
If most experts in the matter of banking practices have averred that compliance with the limited directions of the top court should not take more than a day in this digital time, surely the SBI will need to explain the rationale behind its suspiciously laggard gambit.
If it indeed has a good case, it must seize the opportunity to vindicate itself.
It is interesting that the Electoral Bonds legislation requires that bonds not cashed must be deposited with the “PM Cares” Fund within 15 days. Pray, how can the bank ever do this unless they are already in command of all the information?
That such a stipulation at all exists within the bonds rules may of course be the subject of another curiosity in the days to come.
We recall that the “PM Cares Fund” has often taken a dual stance in the matter of, one, the citizen’s right to information about its doings, and then about its power to obtain donations from public institutions.
When it has been demanded that this fund also be amenable to the Right to Information Law, the Fund has claimed to be a “private” entity, and thus not obliged to make disclosures to the public; but when questioned as to how then it may obtain donations from publicly-funded institutions, it claims to be a public trust.
Clearly, the Fund cannot have it both ways.
For now, the citizens who are due to cast their vote in perhaps the most fraught and consequential election to parliament had better know what mysteries are wrapped within the electoral bonds enigma before they trudge to the polling booth with stars in their eyes.
A political force that has through the years made unrelenting ado about corruption among the political opposition has hardly any grounds to not come forth on the subject with righteous aplomb. After all, it has always claimed that its only quid pro quo is with the people who are last in the line.
It should therefore have no reason to fear the unraveling of facts that pertain to corporate funding.
Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.
