Supreme Court orders SBI to share electoral bond details by Tuesday, rejects plea seeking time till June 30

Rejecting a pea by State Bank of India (SBI) seeking more time to share information about individuals and companies who purchased electoral bonds to fund political parties, the Supreme Court on Monday gave the PSU lender time till the end of business hours on Tuesday, March 12, to furnish the details. The Election Commission of India (ECI) should make the information public on its website by the evening of Friday, March 15, the top court ruled. 

A five-judge Constitution bench of the apex court asked SBI to apprise it about the steps taken so far to ensure disclosure of details of electoral bonds encashed by political parties before the scheme was scrapped last month. The bench, headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, said it had asked SBI to make a "plain disclosure" as per its judgment.

State Bank of India shares ended 1.9 per cent lower at Rs 773.5 apiece on BSE after the news, after starting the day largely unchanged. 

In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, the five-judge bench scrapped the Centre's electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it "unconstitutional", and ordered disclosure by the Election Commission of donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients by March 13.

"In the last 26 days, what steps have you taken? Your application is silent on that," the bench said.

The SBI has to just open the sealed cover, collate the details, and give the information to the Election Commission, the apex court added, with a warning that it would initiate contempt proceedings against it if the said information is not furnished by Tuesday as ordered.

The seven-year-old election funding system, scrapped on February 15, enabled individuals and companies to make unlimited and anonymous donations to political parties

What were electoral bonds?

Through the electoral bond system, introduced by the BJP government in 2017, individuals and corporate groups were allowed to donate unlimited amounts of money to any political party anonymously. Those Electoral Bonds were gifts--not, as the name might suggest, loans--which donors could buy in set denominations from state-run SBI. The donors could then hand them over to any political party which could cash them in at that bank.

The party would know the name of the donor, but was not required to disclose it to anyone, even the election regulator.

Individuals and companies had bought a total of Rs 16,518 crore ($2 billion) worth of bonds up to January 2024, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-government civil society group.

With inputs from agencies