Key Points
The State Bank of India (SBI) approached the Supreme Court on Monday seeking time till June 30 to submit details of electoral bonds (EBs) purchased since April 12, 2019, to the Election Commission of India (ECI), arguing that decoding the data and matching donors to the donations would be a complex process.I)..
The bank highlighted that it needs to decode details of 22,217 EBs, which would involve decoding, compiling and comparing 44,434 (twice the number of EBs issued) information sets because the details relating to buyers and recipients of bonds are kept in two different information silos..
On February 15, a five-judge bench struck down the Centres 2018 EB scheme of political funding, declaring it to be unconstitutional because it completely anonymised contributions made to political parties and added that restricting black money or illegal election financing some of the articulated objectives of the scheme did not justify violating voters right to information in a disproportionate manner..
It is submitted that due to the stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, decoding of the EBs and the matching of the donor to the donations made would be a complex process, stated the plea, referring to the 2018 EB scheme and the standard operating procedure that SBI formulated for 29 authorised branches, spread all over India, with regard to sale and redemption of bonds..
In its February 15 judgment, the Constitution bench ruled that amendments made in the Representation of the People Act, Income Tax Act, and Companies Act through the 2017 Finance Act violated the constitutional right of the electors to access information on the funding of political parties which is necessary to identify corruption and quid pro quo transactions and governance information..
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