On March 4, the SBI had moved its plea for extension of time till June 30 arguing that “decoding” the data and matching donors to the donations would be a “complex process”.

A day after the deadline for the State Bank of India (SBI) to submit details of electoral bonds (EBs) purchased since April 12, 2019, to the Election Commission of India (ECI) ended, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) approached the Supreme Court on Thursday demanding contempt action against the public sector bank for defying the court’s directive.

ADR, a non-profit organisation which is the lead petitioner in the judgment striking down the Centre’s 2018 EB scheme, mentioned the matter before Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud seeking a hearing on March 11 when the SBI’s application for extension of time till June 30 is likely to be taken up.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan submitted before the CJI that the ADR has sought initiation of contempt proceedings against the SBI for abiding by the court-mandated deadline of March 6 to submit full details of EBs purchased since April 12, 2019, to the ECI.

Responding, justice Chandrachud, who headed the bench in the EB case, said that the contempt plea will come up with the SBI’s plea if the petition has been duly numbered and verified.

Bhushan assured the court that he would complete the formalities.

On March 4, the SBI had moved its plea for extension of time till June 30 arguing that “decoding” the data and matching donors to the donations would be a “complex process”.

The application, if allowed, will mean disclosure of donors and recipients of EBs will come only after the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, which are expected to be conducted between April and May this year.

The bank highlighted that it needs to decode details of 22,217 EBs, which would involve decoding, compiling and comparing 44,434 (twice the number of EBs issued) information sets because the details relating to buyers and recipients of bonds are kept in two different information silos.

On February 15, a five-judge bench struck down the Centre’s 2018 EB scheme of political funding, declaring it to be “unconstitutional” because it completely anonymised contributions made to political parties and added that restricting black money or illegal election financing -- some of the articulated objectives of the scheme -- did not justify violating voters’ right to information in a disproportionate manner.

The bench, led by CJI Chandrachud, at the time also directed SBI – the only designated EB-issuing bank -- to forthwith stop the issuance of EBs, adding that the bank will submit details of EBs purchased since April 12, 2019, till that date to the poll watchdog by March 6.

By March 13, the judgment ordered all funding received by political parties since April 12, 2019 – when the court issued an interim direction to the parties to submit such information with ECI -- shall be made public by putting the information on the ECI’s website.

With the SBI asking for extension, the ADR moved a contempt plea on Thursday labelling the SBI’s extension request as “malafide” and an attempt to thwart transparency efforts before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Rebutting the bank’s claims, the ADR said that the SBI India possesses the necessary infrastructure to swiftly compile and disclose information on electoral bonds.

“The SBI’s IT system, designed for managing electoral bonds, is already in place and can easily generate reports based on the unique numbers assigned to each bond... the bank has records of the unique numbers allotted to each electoral bond and the Know Your Customer (KYC) details of purchasers,” stated the plea.

Adding that the SBI has a vast network of branches and a well-functioning IT system, the contempt plea said the bank can compile data for about 22,217 EBs straightforward.

Stressing the significance of transparency in political financing, the ADR argued that voters have a fundamental right to know about the substantial sums of money contributed to political parties through EBs and that the lack of transparency goes against the essence of participatory democracy enshrined in Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

In its extension plea moved on March 4, the SBI sought to bring to the court’s notice “certain practical difficulties with the decoding exercise and the timeline fixed for it.”

“It is submitted that due to the stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, ‘decoding’ of the EBs and the matching of the donor to the donations made would be a complex process,” stated the plea, referring to the 2018 EB scheme and the standard operating procedure that SBI formulated for 29 authorised branches, spread all over India, with regard to sale and redemption of bonds.

According to the public sector bank, not only were details of purchases made at SBI branches not maintained centrally at any one place, but the data related to the issuance of the bond and the data related to the redemption of the bond were also recorded in two different silos.

“No central database was maintained. This was done so as to ensure that donors’ anonymity would be protected. It is submitted that donor details were kept in a sealed cover at the designated branches and all such sealed covers were deposited in the main branch of the applicant bank, which is located in Mumbai,” the plea said.

At the other end, SBI said, at the time of redemption by a political party, the original bond, and the pay-in slip would be stored in a sealed cover and sent to the SBI’s main branch in Mumbai.  

“It can thus be noted that both sets of information’s were being stored independently of each other. Thus, to re-match them would be a task requiring a significant amount of effort... the 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,” its plea said.

SBI added that some of the details such as number of bonds are stored digitally while the other set of details such as name of purchaser, KYC etc are stored physically.

“The purpose of not storing all details digitally was to ensure that it cannot be gathered easily to achieve the object of the scheme,” said the plea, adding the timeline of three weeks fixed by the court in its February 15 judgement would not be sufficient for the entire exercise to be completed.