8

Mar

Is SBI defying Supreme Court order on Electoral Bonds?

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Today’s Edition

New Delhi, 8 March 2024

Dr.Satish Misra

On 15 February this year, the Supreme Court of India, banned BJP's electoral bond scheme, calling it unconstitutional and directed political parties to disclose donations received under the electoral bond scheme.

The apex court’s order was hailed as a historic decision against the use of black money in elections and the growing nexus between the ruling party and big business.  

At the same time, the apex court had also directed the State Bank of India (SBI) to make the complete information related to election donations public before March 6, 2024 (before the Lok Sabha elections) and submit it to the Election Commission.

The ruling BJP, which is the single largest beneficiary of the electoral bond scheme, was uneasy after the Supreme Court decision. The BJP was apprehensive that as soon as the information about its donor friends came into the public domain its loud claims of honesty would come crashing down and exposing its unholy nexus with certain corporates.

A move by the State Bank of India to ask the Supreme Court to extend the March 6 deadline for submitting details on the purchase of electoral bonds to the Election Commission to June 30 raises serious doubts that the bank is doing at the ruling party’s behest.         

The saffron party was tense and was working overtime to find a way out of the dilemma that if details regarding who was donating, what he got in return, which laws were made for their benefit, whether investigations were stopped against those who donated, whether threats of investigation were made to collect donations forcibly saw the light of the day then it might prove to be an electoral disaster.

Best legal minds burn the proverbial midnight oil to find a way out of the conundrum and it was felt that the bank should ask for more time asserting that it is ready to comply with the SC order but it was not possible to submit details till March 6.  

But the plea that the bank has taken does not stand scrutiny. Why does the country's largest and fully computerized bank need 5 months to provide information about electoral bonds? Complete information can be extracted in 5 minutes with one click.

While the SBI is asking today for more time to reveal what can be made available in a few days, it did neither ask for any relief or time in days of demonetization when it was facing an uphill task nor did it seek any time for writing off corporate loans.  

A natural question that arises here is why did State Bank asked for more time to provide information only a day before the last date for providing information. Did it also take a month to calculate exactly how much time it would take?

The SBI, which operates 48 crore accounts, 66 thousand ATMs and 23 thousand branches, needs 5 months to provide information about only 22217 electoral bonds.

The question being asked by experts and observers is whether the country's largest government bank has now become a means of hiding the financial irregularities of the BJP and the means to conceal the source of black money.

An obvious corollary of the question is whether a political party and a government bank are colluding to defy the Supreme Court’s order.

A pertinent point that comes to mind is whether the electorate of the country has the right to know and have the correct information to exercise their voting rights before the Lok Sabha elections or not.

Ordinary people of the country at large barring the camp followers of the ruling party are seeing how the media has become an accomplice of the Modi government in hiding reality and creating false narratives to mislead them.

The State Bank has sought time before the Supreme Court not to give information but to hide the misdeeds of the BJP. But people of the country now understand fully well how the truth is being hidden by putting pressure on government agencies/institutions. The people of the country also understand how the media has become an accomplice of the Modi government in hiding reality and creating false stories.

Conclusions are being drawn in political and civil society circles that the State Bank has only sought time before the Supreme Court to stop information to hide the BJP’s misdeeds which legal minds say may be treated as contempt of the highest court. 

Fortunately, the people of the country have begun to understand fully how the truth is being hidden by putting pressure on government agencies/institutions.( Words 775)

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