The State Bank of India (SBI) on Tuesday submitted to the Election Commission (EC) the details of the parities that had bought the now-scrapped electoral bonds, as well as the details of those who got them. With this, SBI has complied with the Supreme Court order to furnish information.
Sources told the Daily Guardian that, SBI has complied with the orders of the apex court and submitted the details of the electoral bonds to the Election Commission. The top court on March 11 ordered SBI to disclose the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission by close of business hours on March 12.
As per the order, the Election Commission will have to publish the details shared by the bank on its official website by 5 pm on March 15. The Supreme Court on Monday had dismissed SBI’s plea for an extension of time and directed it to disclose the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission by the close of business hours on March 12. A Constitution bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, along with Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra had also directed the EC to publish the shared details on its official website by 5 pm on March 15.
The SBI’s application contended that retrieving information from different silos and matching them would be time-consuming due to stringent measures to keep donor identities anonymous.
“It submitted that the data related to the issuance of the bond and the data related to the redemption of the bond was kept recorded in two different silos. No central database was maintained,” the application stated.