The court said the information on purchasers of electoral bonds and the denomination of the bonds and bonds redeemed by the respective political parties is easily available and does not need matching.

The top court also ordered the Election Commission of India to submit the details of the information related to bonds in a sealed cover by 15 March.

The court sought an affidavit from the chairman and managing director of the SBI regarding compliance with the directions issued, signaling that contempt proceedings may ensue if the bank fails to adhere to the set deadline.

The five-judge bench, led by chief justice DY Chandrachud, said the FAQs provided by SBI indicated that the data, including know-your-customer (KYC) documents and information about political parties, is readily accessible. 

Senior advocate Harish Salve, representing the SBI, sought more time to share the information, citing difficulties in correlating donor details with the details of political bonds cashed. 

Salve said some of the information had been kept physically in different silos rather than digitally, making the correlation process challenging. The electoral bond scheme was supposed to be secretive, which is why the data never made it into the SBI system, he said, claiming that a cautious approach was needed, as donors might sue the bank in case of mistakes.

Chief Justice Chandrachud said the court’s directions did not require the bank to conduct a ‘matching exercise’ but simply to disclose the information.

“The Supreme Court has taken a tough stand on the SBI’s application for an extension of time till June 30 to disclose details about donors of electoral bonds as well as the parties which redeemed these electoral bonds,” senior lawyer and petitioner in the case, Prashant Bhushan, told the media after the order. 

“The court has dismissed the application of the SBI, pointing out that the data that the court had asked them to give is already available with the SBI as per their affidavit, they’ve to submit the details of the donors and details of the parties which redeemed these electoral bonds.”

The unanimous judgment by the constitution bench on 15 February marked the end of the controversial electoral bonds scheme. The court had directed SBI to provide details of bond buyers, purchase dates, and donation amounts to the Election Commission by 6 March and asked the EC to publish this information on its website by March 13.

However, SBI failed to disclose the information by the set deadline and filed a plea for an extension of time until 30 June.

The SBI stated in its plea that it needs more time as between 12 April, 2019, and 15 February, 2024, a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were utilized for donations to various political parties. 

According to SBI, redeemed bonds were deposited at the Mumbai Main Branch by authorized branches, each in sealed envelopes, at the culmination of every phase. The complexity of the situation is further heightened by the presence of two distinct information silos, necessitating the meticulous decoding, compilation, and comparison of a total of 44,434 information sets.

This was followed by the pleas of contempt filed by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Communist Party of India Marxist, seeking to initiate contempt proceedings against SBI and its chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara for not complying with the court’s deadline of 6 March to disclose the electoral bond details.

Introduced in the 2017 Union budget, the electoral bonds scheme allowed citizens and companies to anonymously donate any amount to political parties. While the government argued that donors’ anonymity was meant to prevent retribution, critics said it violated citizens’ right to know how political parties were being funded.

The total amount donated to political parties through electoral bonds between March 2018 and January 2024 stood at ₹16,518.11 crore, according to ADR, one of the petitioners in the case.

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Published: 11 Mar 2024, 01:29 PM IST