The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the chief petitioner in the electoral bonds case, moved the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking contempt proceedings against the State Bank of India (SBI), three days after the latter sought an extension from the apex court to furnish data on electoral bonds.
SBI on Monday moved the Supreme Court seeking an extension of time till June 30, 2024, to furnish data on electoral bonds citing that decoding the data is a complex process due to the stringent SoP adopted to secure donor information and hence more time is needed for the same. The deadline for the same was March 6.
SBI also informed the top court that from April 2019 till the date of judgment in 2024, a total of 22,217 electoral bond donations were received.
On February 15, the Supreme Court had struck down the electoral bonds scheme, calling it “unconstitutional”. In its landmark judgement, the court had observed it violates the Constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression as well as the right to information.
The apex court had ordered SBI to disclose to the Election Commission (EC) the names of the contributors to the six-year-old scheme.
As per the court order, the SBI was required to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties including the date of encashment and the denomination of the bonds. The court had directed the SBI to submit the information to the poll panel by March 6.
“SBI shall furnish the details of donations through electoral bonds and the details of the political parties which received the contributions by March 6,” the court had said.
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