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Desperate Modi govt, clutching at straws: Congress on SBI moving SC on electoral bonds

The SBI, on 4 March, moved the SC seeking an extension till 30 June to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties.

PTI

Published Mar 05, 2024 | 1:37 PM ⚊ Updated Mar 05, 2024 | 1:39 PM

Mallikarjun Kharge

File photo of Mallikarjun Kharge. (Twitter)

The Congress on Tuesday, 5 March, attacked the Union government over the State Bank of India moving the Supreme Court to seek more time to disclose electoral bond details, alleging that the Modi government is using the largest bank in the country as a shield to hide its “dubious dealings”.

The State Bank of India (SBI) on Monday, 4 March, moved the Supreme Court seeking an extension till 30 June to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties. In its verdict last month, the top court directed the SBI to furnish the details to the poll panel by 6 March.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that the Congress’s position on the electoral bonds scheme is that it is “opaque, undemocratic and destroyed the level playing field”.

“Modi government is using the largest bank of our country as a shield to hide its dubious dealings through Electoral Bonds,” he said.

Well past Lok Sabha tenure

No less than the Supreme Court of India had struck down the Modi government’s “black money conversion scheme” of Electoral Bonds, holding it “unconstitutional”, “violative of RTI”, and “illegal”, asking SBI to furnish donor details by 6 March, Kharge said.

“But the BJP wants it to be done after Lok Sabha elections. The tenure of this Lok Sabha will end on 16 June and SBI wants to share the data by 30 June,” he said.

The BJP is the main beneficiary of this “fraudulent scheme”, he alleged.

“Isn’t the government conveniently hiding the BJP’s shady dealings where contracts of highways, ports, airports, power plants etc, were handed over to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cronies in lieu of these opaque electoral bonds?” Kharge asked.

“Experts say that the 44,434 automated data entries of donors can be divulged and matched in just 24 hours. Why does the SBI then need 4 more months to collate this information?” he asked.

“Congress party was crystal clear that the Electoral Bonds scheme was opaque, undemocratic, and destroyed level playing field. But the Modi government, PMO, and FM bulldozed every institution — RBI, Election Commission, Parliament and Opposition to fill BJP’s coffers,” Kharge alleged.

“Now a desperate Modi government, clutching at straws, is trying to use SBI to bulldoze the Supreme Court’s judgement!” he charged.

Congress MP Manish Tewari also hit out at the government and urged the Supreme Court to not allow SBI’s plea. “Supreme Court should not allow @TheOfficialSBI to get away with its chicanery on Electoral Bonds,” Tewari said on X.

“People before the General Elections must know who got what from whom & whether there was any prima-facie quid pro quo involved?” he said.

The Supreme Court must order lifting of the “corporate veil of SPVs called electoral trusts to reveal the true identity of the donor”, Tewari said.

Also Read: Understanding the chronology of electoral bonds scheme case

Attempt to hide ‘donation business’

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had, on Monday, slammed the government over the issue, terming it a “last-ditch attempt” before the Lok Sabha polls to hide Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “real face”.

In a post in Hindi on X, Gandhi said, “Narendra Modi has put his entire force in order to hide the ‘donation business’.”

“When the Supreme Court has stated that it is the right of the people of the country to know the truth about electoral bonds, then why does the SBI not want this information to be made public before the elections?” the former Congress chief said.

In an application filed before the top court, 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 plea submitted that due to stringent measures undertaken to ensure that the identity of the donors was kept anonymous, “decoding” the electoral bonds and matching donors to the donations made would be a complex process.

“It is submitted that the data related to the issuance of the bond and the data related to the redemption of the bond was kept recorded in two different silos. No central database was maintained. This was done 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.

Also Read: Supreme Court strikes down electoral bonds as ‘unconstitutional’

SC strikes down Electoral Bonds

In a landmark judgement that delivered a big blow to the government, the Supreme Court on 15 February annulled the electoral bonds scheme for political funding, saying it violates the Constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression as well as the right to information.

In its verdict months ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the apex court ordered SBI to disclose to the Election Commission the names of the contributors to the six-year-old scheme.

A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud directed that the SBI must disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties. The information should include the date of encashment and the denomination of the bonds and be submitted to the poll panel by March 6.

(Disclaimer: The headline, subheads, and intro of this report along with the photos may have been reworked by South First. The rest of the content is from a syndicated feed, and has been edited for style.)

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