SBI submits electoral bond data in 2 pdf files stored in pen drive: Report

The State Bank of India (SBI) stored all data related to electoral bonds sought by the Supreme Court in two separate password-protected pdf files and submitted it to the Election Commission (EC) in one pen drive along with an envelope containing the passwords on March 12.

SBI deputy managing director wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India giving details of the submission, reported moneycontrol.com. The letter also explains that one pdf file contains the details of the buyers of such bonds, while the other contains the names of political parties that encashed those.

Balance to PM’s relief fund

The letter was submitted as part of the affidavit filed by SBI Chairman Dinesh Khara in Supreme Court. It also states that the SBI has transferred to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund the amount the beneficiaries did not encash within the validity period of 15 days, moneycontrol.com reported.

The files contain the details of electoral bonds bought since April 1, 2019 and redeemed till February 15, 2024, including the date of purchase, name of the purchaser, and the denomination of the bond(s) purchased, and the details of the political parties that received the contributions.

Details of bonds

In all, 22,217 electoral bonds were bought from April 1, 2019 to February 15, 2024. Of these, 3,346 were bought between April 1 and 11, 2019, of which 1,609 were redeemed.

Between April 12, 2019 and February 15, 2024, 18,871 bonds were bought, says the affidavit. Of these, 20,421 were redeemed. Thus, of the 22,217 bonds purchased, 22,030 were redeemed. The 187 bonds that were not redeemed have been encashed and transferred to the PM’s Relief Fund.

What happened in court

In a landmark judgment on February 15, the Supreme Court scrapped the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme, saying these violated the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression, as well as the right to information.

At the same time, the apex court directed the SBI, the only issuer of these bonds, to submit the aforementioned details to the EC by March 6. The EC was asked to publish the list of beneficiaries by March 13.

Court rap

After the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and the CPI(M) filed contempt petitions against SBI for not complying with the court’s order, the bank sought time till June 30 to disclose the details. On March 11, the Supreme Court dismissed the request, directing the public-sector bank to share the details by the close of business hours of March 12, warning of proceedings against it for “wilful disobedience” if it failed to comply.

In the plea, the SBI had said the details of electoral bond purchases are not maintained centrally but in two different silos “to ensure that donors’ anonymity would be protected” and that “retrieval of information from each silo and the procedure of matching the information of one silo to that of the other would be a time-consuming exercise”.

After the court’s rap, however, the SBI complied with the order within a day.