By M L Satyan
Coimbatore, March 6, 2024: Probably, this is the first time in the banking sector of India when the country’s biggest bank has not followed the deadline given by the Supreme Court.
As a customer of this bank, I strongly feel that this bank is not trustworthy. This is the same bank that gave crores of rupees to many corporates who turned up to be the defaulters and left the country. For this reason, the bank’s credibility has become a question mark.
In a landmark judgement that delivered a big blow to the government, the Supreme Court on February 15 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 DY Chandrachud directed that the SBI must disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties. SC insisted that the information must contain the name of the buyer, the denomination of each bond, and the date of purchase.
The SC also wanted SBI to provide details about the political parties that have benefited from contributions made through the bonds, as well as specifics about each bond that they have redeemed. The Supreme Court fixed the deadline as March 6, exactly three weeks after the ruling.
According to the court, the EC must post the material given by the SBI on its official website within a week of receiving it, or by March 13, 2024.
In an application the SBI, the country’s biggest lender, told the Supreme Court 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.”
“Due to the stringent measures that they had adopted to keep the names of the donors anonymous, “decoding” the electoral bonds and the matching of the donor to the donations made would be a “complex process,” the plea stated according to the source.
The plea further stated: “On the other end, each political party was required to maintain a designated account in any of the 29 authorised branches. It was only in this account that electoral bonds received by that party could be deposited and redeemed. At the time of redemption, the original bond, the pay-in slip would be stored in a sealed cover and sent to the SBI Mumbai Main Branch,” as per Money-control.
In its plea, SBI contended that it had taken stringent measures to protect the identity of those who donated to political parties. “No central database was maintained. This was done to ensure that donors’ anonymity would be protected,” the bank said (Source: Hindustan Times, March 4, 2024).
From the reliable data it is learnt that SBI has 480 million accounts, 66,000 ATMs and 23,000 branches all over India. Yet, the bank is trying to borrow time.
Certain valid questions need to be raised at this point:
• Who is pressurizing SBI not to release the list of donors of electoral bonds?
• Don’t the citizens have the right to know the details of the donors of the electoral bonds?
• Why is the SBI requesting for a period of four months?
• What will happen if the list is released before the Lok Sabha election?
• If the SBI is fully computerized, then, why is this undue delay?
• Is this the sign of ‘Digital India’ about which the ruling federal government is proud of?
• Why has the SBI become puppet in the hands of the ruling government?
• What is the message the SBI is giving to the world by not following the deadline given by the SC?
In the era of digital banking, the SBI has sought almost five months to submit the requested information to the EC. A vast majority of people is considering that it is indeed an irony. Yet, the bitter truth is that the federal government wants the SBI to do only one job – to save/protect the government. This indeed is a terrible blow on democracy.
In a major setback to the State Bank of India (SBI), the Supreme Court on Monday 11 March 2024 trashed its plea seeking an extension of time and ordered it to disclose the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission by close of business hours on March 12. ‘In the last 26 days, what steps have you taken? Your application is silent on that,’ the Supreme Court bench told SBI.
A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud also directed the Election Commission to publish the details shared by the bank on its official website by 5 pm on March 15.
The bench, also comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, put the SBI on notice that the apex court may be inclined to proceed against it for “wilful disobedience” of its February 15 verdict if the bank failed to comply with its directions and timelines.
Has this article come out in the free press of India? It should.
Regarding SBI’s request to the Supreme Court of India for an extension till 30 June 2024, readers may watch an interview to The News Minute by Thomas Franco, former General Secretary – All India Bank Officers’ Confederation. The link is: https://youtu.be/47iXqk4p2Fk
In his interview he terms the petition by SBI an “utter lie” and “a historic blunder to try to cover up for the government.” He said the Supreme Court should reject SBI’s petition outright. He expressed fears that this lame excuse by the SBI to the Supreme Court will certainly sully the image of SBI and its customers’ faith in it. He also mentioned the current SBI chairman (who is on an extension for eight-months) must be censured by the Supreme Court for being a party to this petition whatever the pressures might be from the powers-that-be. He cited the previous chairperson who got into an alliance with the Jio Payment Bank in which SBI contributed 30%. After this Reliance had taken huge loans which went bad and were written off. Now after retirement she is on Reliance Board of Directors. It’s a clear case of quid pro quo. Mr Franco opined that the SBI’s attempt to delaying tactics in the disclosure of information on Electoral Bonds (which the Supreme Court of India declared “unconstitutional and manifestly arbitrary”) could be another case of quid pro quo by its chairman who has already been on an extension of eight months!
The SBI,obviously under pressure from the Central Government does not want to expose this explosive information before the Lok Sabha elections as it would be a body blow to the BJP. In the same manner the Government has prevailed upon Amazon to not publish the memoirs of former Chief of Army Staff, General Naravane, because of his observations on the Agnipath scheme, and what happened on the China border. Shame on this government.