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Former finance secretary Subhash Garg called the State of Bank of India’s (SBI) actions in the electoral bonds case “completely unlawful and unexpected”. Speaking with the Indian Express, Garg said the bank was not supposed to record the unique alpha-numeric numbers of the electoral bonds.
“Doing so, it [SBI] had violated the anonymity promised to donors under the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018,” Garg was quoted as saying on Saturday. The bonds numbers can help match the purchasers of the bonds with the political parties that encashed them.
He said by recording the alphanumeric number of the electoral bonds, the SBI “had hit at the basic feature of the scheme that was brought in by the government in 2018 to enable anonymous political donations.”
Garg also alleged that the first affidavit filed by the SBI in connection with the electoral bonds case was “ostensibly false”. He cited the SBI as saying in its first affidavit that the information of donors and parties was kept in physical form in two silos and that it would take three months to match.
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“But subsequent events showed that they recorded the information in a digital form. Their first affidavit appears to be motivated by the desire to push the disclosure of the data beyond the Lok Sabha elections. Why did they file the ostensibly false affidavit,” asked Garg.
Garg’s statement came days after the Election Commission published the complete electoral bond data submitted by the SBI on the orders of the Supreme Court. The fresh data included alpha-numeric numbers.
The two sets of data — 552 pages of details of redemption by political parties and 386 pages of details of donors — covered electoral bonds purchased and redeemed from April 2019 until January 2024.
The State Bank of India was the only bank authorised to sell and redeem the electoral bonds. The bonds were first issued in March 2018 and were being sold until being declared null and void by the Supreme Court on February 15.eese
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Published: 23 Mar 2024, 08:26 PM IST
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