New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India is all set to hear the petition of the State Bank of India (SBI) regarding the extension of the deadline for disclosing electoral bond donor details to the Election Commission of India (EC). The SBI has requested an extension till June 30.
As per official reports, 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, will hear the plea today.
The Supreme Court will also hear a contempt petition filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) against SBI.
Earlier, 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