SC Junks SBI’s Plea In Electoral Bond Case, Demands To Submit Data In One Day

The SBI’s request for additional time to release information regarding the Electoral Bond Case was denied by the Supreme Court. While hearing the plea, the SC rejected the SBI’s plea and ordered them to share the complete data on electoral bonds until tomorrow.

The Court also warned SBI that if it fails to provide details until tomorrow, they will initiate contempt of court proceedings against the government-run bank. It also fielded tough questions on SBI’s new plea and asked what the bank had done in the past 26 days.

Opposing the SBI’s plea, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), one of the petitioners who had challenged the Narendra Modi government’s 2017-electoral bonds scheme, said that the SBI filed the application at the last moment to ensure the details are not revealed to the public before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Earlier, on February 15, while scrapping the electoral bond scheme, the court ordered SBI to disclose all details about electoral bond donations that were made by March 13. But after failing in that, the public sector bank approached the SC to ask for three more months of time to provide electoral bond data.

In its plea, SBI said that it can provide all details until June 30. However, SC rejected this and ordered them to share the data within one day. It also asked the Election Commission of India to publish the data on its portal before the Lok Sabha polls.