Congratulations to the Supreme Court bench headed by the CJI Dr. D Y Chandrachud once again for exposing the political game of the Narendra Modi Government on the disclosure of the electoral bonds details. The CJI showed his firmness on Monday by asking the SBI to submit the electoral bond details to the Election Commission of India by 5 PM on March 12 as against June 30 this year demanded by the SBI in its review plea.
Earlier on February 15, the same bench led by the CJI scrapped the 2017 electoral bonds scheme as unconstitutional and asked the SBI to submit all the details on the bonds purchases to the ECI by March 6 this year and the same would be put in the website of the ECI by March 13. The SBI submitted its plea to the Supreme Court on March 4 for the extension of the deadline to June 30 this year, nearly four months more for completing their work. The bench led by the CJI rejected that plea by making it clear that the SBI got adequate time after February 15 to complete its work and there was no ground for seeking nearly four month extension for such disclosure in a digitalized system.
More significant is the fact that the Supreme Court bench warned that it will initiate contempt proceedings against the government run SBI if it does not provide the information by 5 PM of Tuesday. This warning was given on the basis of the full understanding of the judges led by the CJI that the SBI at the instance of the present government is playing a cunning game to somehow delay the bonds disclosures till the end of the Lok Sabha elections.
The fact is that the SBI officials are highly efficient and the digital team can do such work in the shortest possible time- the details of more than 22, 000 bonds purchased between January 1, 2018 to February 15, 2024. Earlier the SBI officials completed much more complicated work in the shortest possible period with the help of their own digital team. SBI counsel Harish Salve had no defence when the CJI said that the Bank said that the donor details were kept in a sealed cover in Mumbai branch of the SBI, then what was the justification for seeking such long extension?. Justice Sanjiv Khanna clarified the position further by saying that ‘ You have to just open the sealed cover, collate the details and give the information’. The veteran counsel Salve had no real answer.
Under the Narendra Modi government, the public sector banks have no autonomy, the CMDs have to carry out the instructions of their owners, the central government. The SBI officers, on their own could have carried out the order of the Supreme Court on their own by submitting the details within March 6 this year to the ECI. According to the documents available with the RTI activist Commodore Lokesh Batra, the SBI submitted data to the government on electoral bonds in less than 48 hours after they were asked in 2019.
Significantly, former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg, who was economic affairs secretary when electoral bonds were first introduced, said that the State Bank of India needs “not more than a day” to make available the electoral bond information the Supreme Court has asked the bank to give to the Election Commission. Garg says “this information is readily available”, adding, “it is available at the click of a button”.
In an interview to The Wire, Garg says that the State Bank of India has either deliberately misconstrued or failed to understand the simple nature of the six bits of information that they are required to give to the Election Commission and, instead, the bank claims that it has been asked to collate different bits of information which it was not asked to do. In other words, the bank has made the simple things required of it seem more complicated and long drawn out than is the case. This has given the SBI the basis on which to argue that it needs three and a half months more, pushing the deadline to June 30.
Garg explained that the Supreme Court simply asked for six simple bits of information: who purchased the bonds, the date and the amount and also which party received the bonds, when they were encashed and the amount. This information is readily available. The electoral bond guidelines of 2018 themselves require that it should be given to any court when demanded and Justice Deepak Gupta has revealed that he was part of a Supreme Court bench which in 2019 ordered the bank to maintain such records.
Garg also said he believes that in 2019 details of electoral bonds sold up to that date were given to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelope. At the time the bank did not need or ask for extra time. Why do they need extra time to give similar details for the period post 2019?
Thus, there is no alibi left for the SBI in this disclosure of the electoral bonds details. The finance ministry has been exposed. The ruling regime is afraid that the details will reveal how the crony capitalists had donated to the BJP as also the relationship of donations in bulk with the timing of raids to some of the industrial houses, both big or small. The disclosures will certainly vindicate Rahul Gandhi’s campaign about quid pro quo between the BJP-led government and the industrialists. That is what the Narendra Modi government is trying to avoid. It is to be seen whether the SBI complies with the order by submitting the details to the ECI by March 12 5 PM or resort to some new ploy to stick to its position. (IPA Service)
