ADR files plea in SC seeking contempt proceedings against SBI over failure to provide details of Electoral Bonds
Supreme Court will consider a Contempt of Court petition against the State Bank of India (SBI) on March 11 for not providing receiver and donor details of electoral bonds. Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud on Thursday assured to petitioner’s lawyer Prashant Bhushan of listing the contempt of court petition on Monday – March 11. The Contempt of Court petition was filed by one of the petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) against SBI for failing to meet the deadline of March 6 set by the top court for disclosing the details of all electoral bonds purchased and enchased.
“It is numbered and verified. Once it is done, then send an email to the Registry. We will list,” CJI told Bhushan, assuring to hear the petition on March 11.
SBI on March 4th evening approached the apex court, seeking time up to June 30 to provide details of receivers and donors of electoral bonds. SBI’s application has not yet come up for hearing. In the application filed just before the Court-mandated deadline of March 6, the public-sector bank cited ‘certain practical difficulties’ in completing the exercise.
“Due to the stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, “decoding” of the Electoral bonds and the matching of the donor to the donations made would be a complex process…details of purchases made at the Branches are not maintained centrally at any one place…was kept recorded in two different silos…This was done so as to ensure that donors’ anonymity would be protected,” it stated.
In the application seeking action against the SBI, the ADR has submitted that the bank’s claim demonstrates willful and deliberate disobedience & defiance of the judgment passed by the Constitution Bench. ADR has accused the SBI of deliberately filing the application at the last moment to ensure that the details of donor and the amount of donations are not disclosed to the public before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Questioning the SBI’s claim of the complexity of the process, the ADR has stated that the bank has the record of the unique number allotted to each Electoral Bond and the KYC details of its purchaser. “That the requirement of the KYC is mentioned in Section 4 of the EB scheme itself, therefore, the SBI is well aware of the identity of purchasers of each Electoral Bond,” ADR pointed out.
“Total 22,000 bonds bought and deposited by parties. Each bond is numbered & name & KYC details are taken by SBI for each bond sold. When the bond is deposited by the party, SBI tallies bond No. to see if this numbered bond was bought in the last 15 days. Yet SBI needs 140 days to provide this data?!,” said Prashant Bhushan, blaming SBI for acting on political compulsions.
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Madness of Supreme Court. SBI did to defy Supreme Court. Barking dogs never bite. Why hurry, first listen to SBI views.
Interesting. If this goes against the BJP (which is very likely), then Modi 3.0 may not be such a sure thing.