Electoral Bonds: Despite Supreme Court order, SBI did not give information about electoral bonds, asked for more time

State Bank of India has not yet given information about electoral bonds to the Election Commission, whereas the Supreme Court in its order had given a deadline of March 6 to SBI to provide information about electoral bonds. SBI filed a petition in the Supreme Court on Monday and sought more time to provide information. However, SBI's petition has not yet been listed for hearing by the Supreme Court. Electoral bonds were issued by SBI Bank only, which is why the Supreme Court had ordered SBI Bank to provide the information.

The Supreme Court, in its historic decision on February 15, had banned the Electoral Bond Scheme. The Supreme Court had said in its decision that the Electoral Bond Scheme is unconstitutional and this scheme is a violation of the Right to Information. The Supreme Court had ordered SBI Bank to give complete information about the electoral bonds to the Election Commission by March 6, like which party has received how much donation from the electoral bonds so far and the date of encashing the electoral bonds etc. Also, the Election Commission was asked to upload this information on its official website by March 13. Now, despite the expiry of the deadline, SBI has not given information about electoral bonds to the Election Commission and has filed a petition in the Supreme Court, seeking time till June 30 to provide the information. SBI has said in the petition that it will take a lot of time to extract the information, hence they should be given more time.

The Central Government notified the Electoral Bond Scheme on 2 January 2018. Under this scheme, any person can buy electoral bonds either alone or jointly with others to donate to political parties. These electoral bonds could be purchased from the chosen branch of SBI and one could donate that bond to any political party. This bond can range from one thousand to one crore rupees. The political party has to get the cash through a bank account verified by the Election Commission within 15 days of receiving the bond. However, there were allegations regarding this scheme that the identity of those purchasing electoral bonds is not disclosed in this scheme and this scheme can become a means of using black money in elections. There were also allegations that under the Electoral Bond Scheme, big corporate houses can donate as much as they want to any political party without revealing their identity.