The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday moved a request before the Supreme Court to retrieve the electoral bond (EB) documents it had presented to the court in November last year, the same day it made public the data on EBs provided by the State Bank of India (SBI). The top court is set to hear the plea on Friday.

Claiming that it did not retain copies of the documents, the ECI expressed its inability to comply with the court order on Monday that directed the poll body to “forthwith” publish the details of the information which was supplied to the court in November 2023.

On November 2, a Constitution bench led by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud directed the ECI to provide the court with comprehensive information on donations received by political parties through EBs till September 30, 2023. Subsequently, the ECI submitted details in two tranches, containing 309 and 214 sealed envelopes, respectively.

According to the ECI’s application moved on Thursday, to maintain the confidentiality of the aforesaid data, the poll body forwarded the documents to the court in sealed covers without keeping any copies of the same.

“Thus, no copies of the documents/statements filed by the Election Commission of India before this Hon’ble Court in the instant case were ever retained by it,” stated the application, filed through advocate Amit Sharma.

The ECI thus requested the court to direct release of the documents so that the information could be uploaded on its website without delay.

“It is requested that the aforementioned portion of the order dated 11.03.2024 passed by this Hon’ble Court may be rectified/modified and the aforementioned documents/data/information so submitted by the Election Commission of India before this Hon’ble Court in sealed covers/boxes may be returned to it, to enable the Election Commission of India to comply with the directions passed by this Hon’ble Court,” read the application.

According to the court order on Monday, ECI must make public all the information on EBs by 5pm on March 15.

On Wednesday, the SBI chairman filed his affidavit of compliance in the Supreme Court, informing it that the entire details of EBs purchased since April 1, 2019, have been submitted to the ECI by the deadline set down by the court in its order on Monday.

The affidavit of SBI chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara stated that the documents furnished to ECI include two sets of information — one containing the names of political parties and the details regarding the bonds redeemed by them, while the other set contains the details of EB purchasers. These two sets of data were released by the ECI on its website on Thursday evening.

The SBI chairman’s affidavit added that 22,217 bonds were purchased between April 1, 2019, and February 15, 2024, and the total number of bonds redeemed during this period was 22,030. The 187 bonds not redeemed within the validity period of 15 days were transferred to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund in accordance with a 2018 gazette notification.

SBI had earlier this month approached the Supreme Court with a plea for granting it time till June 30 to submit details of EBs purchased since April 12, 2019, arguing that “decoding” the data and matching donors to recipients would be a “complex process”.

But, on Monday, the five-judge bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, rejected the SBI’s plea, noting that the required information was “readily available” with the bank and giving it time until the business hours of March 12 to do so.

This bench had on February 15 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. It had ordered full disclosure of EBs purchased and those redeemed by political parties.