Electoral Bonds Case : Contempt Plea filed Against SBI by ADR After it Fails to Disclose Data By March 6
(Judicial Quest News Network)
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on March 7, moved the Apex Court with a contempt plea against the State bank of India’s failure to submit details of electoral bonds by the court-prescribed deadline of March6.
The petition is filed through Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan who urged the court to urgently hear the plea against the SBI for alleged non-compliance with the Supreme Court‘s order to disclose details of electoral bonds.
It is submitted that the State Bank of India has deliberately filed the said Application for Direction dated 04.03.2024 at the last moment in order 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 said application neither discloses the progress made so far & steps taken to comply with the judgment dated 15.02.2024, nor it shows even part-compliance of the judgment passed by this Hon’ble Court.
“It is submitted that the SBI has wilfully and deliberately disobeyed the judgment passed by the Constitution Bench of this Hon’ble Court, and the same not only negates the right to information of the citizens, but also wilfully undermines the authority of this Hon’ble Court”.ADR said in its petition.
On February 15, the Supreme Court annulled the electoral bond scheme for political funding, stating that it violates the Constitutional right to freedom of speechand expression, as well as the right to information. In its verdict, the court directed the SBI to provide the details of all electoral bnds encashed from April 2019 onwards to the Election Commission by March 6.
In February, a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud had stuck down the electoral bonds scheme and directed the SBI to disclose details of each electoral bond encahsed by the political parties.
The Electoral Bond Scheme, the proviso to Section 29C (1) of the Representation of the People Act 1951 (as amended by Section 137 of Finance Act 2017), Section 182(3) of the Companies Act (as amended by Section 154 of the Finance Act 2017), and Section 13A (b) (as amended by Section 11 of Finance Act 2017) are violative of Article 19(1)(a) and unconstitutional; and b. The deletion of the proviso to Section 182(1) of the Companies Act permitting unlimited corporate contributions to political parties is arbitrary and violative of Article 14.
Earlier this month SBI also had submitted an application which had not 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 donorto 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 soil… 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 Constiotution Bench.
ADR submitted that SBI’s application neither discloses the progress made so far and steps taken to comply with the judgement.
ADR further submitted that the electoral bonds are completely traceable which is evident from the fact that SBI maintains a secret number-based record of donors who buy bonds, and the political parties they donate to.As per experts on the said software, since each electoral bond has a unique number, a simply query on the database can generate a report in a particular format which does not require any manual verification.
That sealed envelopes are only physical instruments like a cheque, the actual transaction of the cheque being deposited is in the database that can be easily extracted by generating a software query.
As per experts on the said software, since each electoral bond has a unique number, a simply query on the database can generate a report in a particular format which does not require any manual verification. That sealed envelopes are only physical instruments like a cheque, the actual transaction of the cheque being deposited is in the database that can be easily extracted by generating a software query.
The electoral bond scheme was introduced through the Finance Act, 2017, which in turn amended three other statues- the reserve Bank of India Act, the Income Tax Act and the Representation of Ppeople Act.
Various petitions had been filed before the Supreme Court challenging at least five amendments madde 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 bench of Chiief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra 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:
- SBI should submit the details of the political parties that have received contributions through electoral bonds from April 12, 2019 to the ECI.
- SBI( in the formation given to ECI) must disclose details of each electoral bond encashment and the denomination of the electoral bond. This information is to be submitted to the ECI by March 6,2024.
- The ECI shall publish this information on its official website within one week of receiving this information from the SBI that is by March 15.
- Electoral bonds which are within the validity period of 15 days but which have not been enchased by political parties yet, shall be returned by the political parties to the purchaser depending on who is sin procession of the bond to the issuing bank.
