SBI submits poll bond data, EC says information in ‘digital format’, should be able to meet deadline

Sources indicated that Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, who is away on a visit to Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday, instructed the officers not to review the data until the poll panel completes its visit by Wednesday night. Kumar is expected to return late Wednesday night.

The Commission currently has only one member, Rajiv Kumar, as Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey retired on February 14, and Election Commissioner Arun Goel abruptly resigned last Saturday on account of undisclosed reasons.

“A committee will be set up to review the SBI data. Given that it is in digital format, we should ideally not have any problem meeting the Supreme Court deadline (of March 15) for making it public. But anyway, this tranche of data will only be accessed by any office of the Commission once the CEC (Chief Election Commissioner) is back,” said a source.

Another officer said, “We have not yet seen the content of the shared data. However, we will ensure that it is made public exactly in the format it has been provided.”

Confirming that it has received the electoral bond details, the poll panel in a post on X said: “In compliance of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s directions to the SBI, contained in its order dated Feb 15 & March 11, 2024 (in the matter of WPC NO.880 of 2017), data on electoral bonds has been supplied by State Bank of India to Election Commission of India, today, March 12, 2024.”

In compliance of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s directions to the SBI, contained in its order dated Feb 15 & March 11, 2024 (in the matter of WPC NO.880 of 2017), data on electoral bonds has been supplied by State Bank of India to Election Commission of India, today, March 12, 2024.

— Spokesperson ECI (@SpokespersonECI) March 12, 2024

On Monday, the Supreme Court had rejected the SBI’s application for more time to provide details of the buyers of electoral bonds and the political parties that encashed them.

Earlier, while scrapping the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018, the Supreme Court had directed the SBI to give the ECI the data by March 6. The ECI was instructed to publish the data by March 13.

However, on March 4, the bank moved the court seeking additional time till June 30, stating that the task of matching each donation to the party was time consuming. The court on Monday clarified that it had not asked for the matching exercise to be done and directed the bank to send the name of the buyer, the date and denomination of every bond sold, and the name of the party, date of redemption, and denomination of every bond redeemed from April 12, 2019, onwards to the ECI by the close of business hours on Tuesday.

On February 15, the SC struck down the electoral bond scheme and asked the SBI to furnish the details of the bonds purchased from April 12, 2019, to February 15, 2024, to the ECI by March 6. Just two days before the court-set deadline, SBI had on March 4 sought an extension of time till June 30.