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A week after the State Bank of India (SBI) and the Election Commission (EC) published the details on the companies and individuals who purchased electoral bonds and the parties that redeemed them in separate lists, the Supreme Court has directed the government bank to disclose the complete details of the electoral bonds, including the unique bond numbers, by Thursday.
With the disclosures on Thursday, the full extent of the electoral bonds scheme is likely to become clear as the unique code on each bond will directly match the donors to the recipient parties.
A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud directed the SBI chairman to file an affidavit before it by 5pm on Thursday indicating that the bank has disclosed all the details. The EC is expected to publish the data on its website shortly after.
“We had asked all details to be disclosed by the SBI, which includes electoral bond numbers as well. Let SBI not be selective in disclosure,” the bench said on Monday.
In its landmark verdict on February 15, the Supreme Court had scrapped the electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordered the disclosure of the donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients by March 13. The court also rejected the SBI’s request for a delay, after which the details were published on March 14.
In context: The previous disclosures on electoral bonds – first by the SBI and EC and then by some parties themselves – showed that the 22,217 electoral bonds that were purchased by donors between April 1, 2019, and February 15 this year amounted to a total of Rs 12,156 crore, of which almost half came from the top 20 donors alone.
A large number of donors operate in sectors where resources are scarce, are controlled by the government, or require licences and clearances from various government agencies. These businesses range from mining and metals, energy and telecom to drugs and pharmaceuticals, and real estate and construction.
Among the parties, the BJP was by far the biggest beneficiary of the scheme, redeeming a total of Rs 6,061 crore in that period, followed by the Trinamool Congress at Rs 1,610 crore and the Congress at Rs 1,422 crore.
With the latest disclosure coming just days after the Lok Sabha election schedule was announced, the specific links between the donors and the recipients are likely to be the subject of parties’ campaign messaging. Already the Congress has accused the Narendra Modi-led BJP government of “hafta vasuli” (extortion) and claimed that a total of 21 firms which have faced investigations from the CBI, ED, or IT, have donated through electoral bonds. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, however, said last week that the government’s aim behind the scheme was to combat black money.
With the election season officially underway and the first phase of voting scheduled for April 19, the Supreme Court will on Thursday hear pleas on the appointment of election commissioners and a PIL against the practice of parties promising freebies.
Last week, the court had refused to stay the appointments of new election commissioners (ECs) under a 2023 law that excluded the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel. It deferred till March 21 the hearing on a batch of pleas challenging the recent appointments of former IAS officers Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Sandhu as ECs last Thursday. They were selected by a panel chaired by the PM.
The court will also hear a PIL that seeks a direction to the EC to invoke its powers to freeze the election symbols and cancel the registration of parties promising freebies, arguing that they “unduly influence voters, disturb the level playing field and vitiate the purity of the poll process”.
The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi in Maharashtra, comprising the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s NCP, is likely to finalise its seat-sharing pact on Thursday. The parties have been holding meetings over the week to arrive at the final division of the state’s 48 Lok Sabha seats. The Congress’s Central Election Committee also met on Wednesday to discuss and finalise its candidates.
Meanwhile, in Delhi, Aam Aadmi Party CM Arvind Kejriwal has been summoned for the ninth time by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday in connection to the excise policy case. The summons comes days after Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLC K Kavitha was arrested by the ED in the same case.
– With PTI inputs
