NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court will on Monday hear the application filed by the State Bank of India (SBI) seeking extension till June 30 to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties before the scheme was scrapped last month.
A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud will also hear a separate plea, which has sought initiation of contempt action against the SBI, alleging it “wilfully and deliberately” disobeyed the apex court’s direction to submit details of the contributions made to political parties through electoral bonds to the Election Commission by March 6.
The apex court bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, will assemble at 10.30 am to hear the two petitions.
In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, a five-judge Constitution bench scrapped the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordered disclosure by the Election Commission of the donors, the amount donated by them, and the recipients by March 13.
The top court subsequently directed the SBI, the authorised financial institution under the scheme, to submit by March 6 the details of the electoral bonds purchased from April 12, 2019 till date to the Election Commission, which was asked to publish the information on its official website by March 13.
On March 4, the SBI moved the apex court seeking extension till June 30 to disclose the details of the electoral bonds encashed by political parties.
The SBI contended that retrieval of information from “each silo” and the procedure of matching the information of one silo to that of the other would be a time-consuming exercise.
The application said due to stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, “decoding” the electoral bonds and matching the donors to the donations would be a complex process.