New Delhi: The State Bank of India (SBI) has requested the Supreme Court to extend the deadline till June 30 for giving information about electoral bonds to the Election Commission.
The Supreme Court in a historic judgment last month had struck down the electoral bonds scheme and told SBI to give the information to the Election Commission (EC) by March 6.
The Supreme Court ended the controversial electoral bonds scheme on the grounds that it violated citizens' right to information. The electoral bonds scheme, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud had said, was unconstitutional and arbitrary and may lead to a quid pro quo arrangement between political parties and donors.
The Supreme Court had ordered SBI to stop issuing these bonds and give details of donations made through this mode to the EC. The poll body was then told to publish this information on its website by March 13.
The Constitution bench of five judges held that the stated objective of fighting black money and maintaining the confidentiality of donors cannot defend the scheme. Electoral bonds, the court said, are not the only way to curb black money.
The electoral bonds scheme was introduced in 2018 with the stated objective of blocking black money from entering the political system.
The then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said the conventional practice of political funding in India was cash donations. "The sources are anonymous or pseudonymous. The quantum of money was never disclosed. The present system ensures unclean money coming from unidentifiable sources. It is a wholly non-transparent system," he had said. On the confidentiality clause, he had said the disclosure of the donors' identity would make them go back to the cash option.
Soon after the scheme was implemented, multiple parties challenged it in court. These included CPM, Congress leader Jaya Thakur, and the non-profit Association for Democratic Reforms. They argued that the confidentiality clause came in the way of the citizen's right to information.