Supreme Court rejects SBI plea for more time, says submit bond details today

The top court had on February 15 this year 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.

Not taking SBI’s request, the top court sought an affidavit from the Chairman and Managing Director of SBI on compliance of its directions and cautioned that it may initiate proceedings if the bank failed to comply with the timelines set by it in Monday’s order.

In fact, it quizzed the SBI on the steps taken till date subsequent to the February 15 order. “Our judgment is dated February 15. We are now on March 11. In the last 26 days..what steps have been taken by you? The application is absolutely silent on that,” CJI Chandrachud said.

On February 15, striking down the changes made in the laws in 2018 to implement the scheme as “unconstitutional”, the Supreme Court bench, also comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, had asked the SBI to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties, including their date of encashment and the denomination.

Four years back, in an interim order on April 12, 2019, the SC had asked political parties to submit details of donations via electoral bonds to the ECI in a sealed cover to be kept in the safe custody of the commission till further orders. On Monday, the SC directed the poll body to publish this data on its website as well.

The court which was also seized of contempt petitions filed by the petitioners in the case against SBI said, “While we are not inclined to exercise the contempt jurisdiction… at this stage bearing in mind the application which was submitted for an extension of time, we place SBI on notice that this court may be inclined to proceed against it for wilful disobedience of the judgement if SBI does not comply with the directions of this court as set out in the judgement dated February 15, 2024, by the timelines indicated in this order.”

Matching bonds against recipients

Appearing for the SBI, Senior Advocate Harish Salve said though the information on purchase and redemption was available with the bank in two separate silos, the confusion was about whether the February 15 order required it to match the bonds against the recipients.

“The only problem… the Standard Operating Procedure which we had, made sure there was no connection between the name of the purchaser in our core banking system and the bond number because we as a bank were told that this is supposed to be secret,” Salve said.

In response, the CJI said, “If you see the directions which we have issued (referring to the February 15 order), we have not told you to do the matching exercise. We have asked you for a plain disclosure. Therefore, the grounds on which you seek an extension of time to make the disclosure does not accord with the directions of the judgement at all. The judgment does not tell you to do that exercise.”

“If that’s not so, then there is no problem,” said Salve.

During the hearing, as the senior counsel reiterated his apprehension on matching, Justice Gavai said, “That’s not been asked Mr Salve. There is no direction to correlate it with the purchaser and the political party.”

When Salve said the order seemed to suggest so, Justice Gavai said, “Don’t go by what is suggested. Whatever we wanted to speak, we have spoken it black and white.”

After the court dictated its order, Salve once again sought a clarification on the point to which Justice Gavai said that from the order dictated by the CJI Monday, “it is very clear that there is no scope for any confusion…”

Earlier during the hearing, Salve explained the process adopted by SBI and said, “When the purchases were made, we divided the information. The names were kept at one place and purchases recorded at another place…We knew this was sensitive information. So a physical process was devised. We sort of did a KYC and kept the name in that. It was done to prevent this type of gossip that so and so purchased this much…”

‘SBI has all details’

The CJI said, “But ultimately, everything was sent to the Mumbai main branch… given your FAQs which were shown to us in the course of the hearing, they indicate that for every purchase, you have to have a separate KYC… every time somebody made a purchase, a KYC was mandatory…Therefore, you have the details.”

“I have. I am not saying I don’t have it,” said Salve.

“You say the purchase details are there in a sealed cover in the main branch of SBI. You simply have to open the sealed cover, take the names and give the details. You also say donee details are there in sealed cover..open and give it,” said Justice Khanna.

Salve said the bank will file a detailed response to which the CJI said, “It should have been disclosed in the affidavit. It’s the SBI which is coming to us. We expect that there should be a degree of candour on the part of the SBI that this is the work which we have done. The work is at this stage, we need an extension of time to carry on with the balance of the exercise…”

On the time being taken, Salve said the bank cannot afford to make a mistake as it would lead the donors to sue it, Justice Khanna said, “Why would that happen?…one bank in the country, we expect them to be able to handle this.”

The senior counsel said, “We were told to make sure this information doesn’t leak, So the way we stored this information, the bond no did not get into the core banking system. If we had been told to keep information to this basis, we would have devised our system accordingly. If we had kept it like that, any senior bank officer could have found out..and the whole thing would have been out in public domain.”Rejecting the prayer for more time, the court said, “…the electoral bond published by the SBI… states that KYC documents must be submitted by the purchaser each time the bond is purchased… Contributors who have SBI accounts as well as those who do not, have to submit the electoral bond application, KYC documentation and proof of payment through NEFT /cheque or demand draft. Thus, the details of the electoral bond which have been purchased and which have been directed to be disclosed by this Court are readily available,” it said.

Similarly, SBI’s FAQs on electoral bonds with respect to redemption of bonds state that each political party can open only one current account for electoral bond redemption. “The current account could be opened by the political party only in 29 branches…Thus, information about a political party encashment of electoral bonds would be stored only in these branches which would be clearly accessible…,” it said.