SC to hear SBI plea today

New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India will hear State Bank of India's extension plea on providing details about electoral bonds on Monday. SBI had earlier sought an extension till June 30. A five-judge Constitution bench headed by CJI Chandrachud will also hear a separate plea, which has sought initiation of contempt action against the SBI alleging, it ‘willfully and deliberately’ disobeyed the apex court's direction to submit details of the contributions made to political parties through electoral bonds to the Election Commission by March 6.

The apex court bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, will assemble at 10.30 am to hear the two petitions. In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, a five-judge constitution bench scrapped the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordered disclosure by the Election Commission of the donors, the amount donated by them, and the recipients by March 13.

The top court subsequently directed the SBI, the authorised financial institution under the scheme, to submit by March 6 the details of the electoral bonds purchased from April 12, 2019 till date to the Election Commission, which was asked to publish the information on its official website by March 13.

The SBI contended that retrieval of information from “each silo” and the procedure of matching the information of one silo to that of the other would be a time-consuming exercise.

The application said due to stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, “decoding” the electoral bonds and matching the donors to the donations would be a complex process.