Supreme Court dismisses SBI’s plea for more time to disclose electoral bonds date, asks for details by tomorrow
New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India has dismissed the petition of State Bank of India on extension of time to disclose electoral bonds date till June 30. Furthermore, the top court has asked SBI to provide details by tomorrow (March 12).
The SBI has been asked to disclose the information till the business hours tomorrow, while the SC has asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to upload it on its website by 5 pm on March 15.
The hearing was done by a five-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and also comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
It is worth mentioning here that on February 15, the top court struck down the electoral bond scheme as unconstitutional. The SC directed the SBI to furnish details of all electoral bond purchases since April 12, 2019, to the Election Commission by March 6. It further directed this information to be published on the Election Commission website by March 13.
“SBI must disclose details of each Electoral Bond encashed by political parties which shall include the date of encashment and the denomination of the Electoral Bond. SBI shall submit the above information to the ECI within three weeks from the date of this judgment, that is, by March 6, 2024,” it had said.
In its application filed two days before the expiry of the deadline set out by the apex court, the SBI said that “decoding” of the Electoral Bonds and the matching of the donor to the donations is a complex and time-consuming exercise and the timeline of three weeks would not be sufficient for the entire exercise to be completed.
Ms Kalinga