Electoral Bonds: ADR moves Supreme Court for contempt of court action against SBI

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has moved the Supreme Court seeking contempt of court action against the State Bank of India (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 from April 2019..A bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud today agreed to list ADR's application after advocate Prashant Bhushan mentioned it."It is numbered and verified. Once it is done, then send an email to the Registry. We will list," CJI told Bhushan..A Constitution Bench of the top court had last month unanimously quashed the Electoral Bonds Scheme and directed the SBI to submit the details of the political parties that have received contributions through electoral bonds from April 12, 2019, till date to the Election Commission of India (ECI).The SBI was also directed to disclose the details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties by March 6. The ECI was to then publish this information on its official website within one week of receiving this information from the SBI..However, the SBI this week asked the Supreme Court for an extension till June 30 to comply with the directions. 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 bank's claim demonstrates a wilful and deliberate disobedience & defiance of the judgement 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. The application neither discloses the progress made so far and steps taken to comply with the judgment, the ADR has said..Questioning the SBI's claim of complexity of the process, the ADR has stated that the bank has the record of 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," the application filed by ADR contends.While relying on the view of "experts", the ADR has also submitted that since each electoral bond has a unique number, a simply query on the database can generate a report in a particular format without any requirement of any manual verification. .The Electoral Bonds Scheme had allowed donors to anonymously send funds to a political party after buying bearer bonds from the SBI.It was introduced introduced through the Finance Act, 2017, which in turn amended three other statutes - the Reserve Bank of India Act, the Income Tax Act and the Representation of People Act.Various petitions were filed before the top court challenging at least five amendments made to different statutes through the Finance Act, 2017 on the ground that they have opened doors to unlimited, unchecked funding of political parties..A five-judge Constitution Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra while unanimously quashing the Electoral Bonds Scheme had asked SBI to immediately stop the issue of Electoral Bonds.It had also passed the following directions:1. SBI should submit the details of the political parties that have received contributions through electoral bonds from April 12, 2019 to the ECI.2. SBI (in the information given to ECI) 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. This information is to be submitted to the ECI by March 6, 2024.3. The ECI shall publish this information on its official website within one week of receiving this information from the SBI, that is by March 13.4. Electoral bonds which are within the validity period of 15 days but which have not been encashed by political parties yet, shall be returned by the political parties to the purchaser depending on who is in possession of the bond to the issuing bank.