Electoral bonds: Supreme Court Issues Notice to SBI Over Unrevealed Electoral Bond Numbers

The State Bank of India (SBI) was ordered by the Supreme Court to provide the political parties with the unique alpha-numeric numbers of the electoral bonds they received, along with a request for the bank’s response, on Friday. The Election Commission (EC) filed an application to modify the operational portion of its March 11 order in the electoral bonds case. The five-judge Constitution bench, led by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, ordered its registrar (judicial) to make sure that the data filed by the poll panel before it in a sealed cover be scanned and digitized.

It specified that this should ideally be done by Saturday at 5 p.m., and that the original documents should be sent back to the EC after the exercise is finished. During the hearing, senior advocate Kapil Sibal and attorney Prashant Bhushan, who appeared on behalf of the petitioner, made submissions that the SBI had not disclosed the alpha-numeric numbers of the electoral bonds. The bench, which also included justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, took note of these arguments.

It posted the case for hearing on March 18 and sent a notice to the bank. The poll panel claimed in its application to the supreme court that the March 11 order had stipulated that copies of the documents it had submitted to the court during the hearing would be kept at the EC’s office in a sealed cover. The EC stated that it had no copies of the documents and that it could return them if necessary in order to follow the court’s orders.

The supreme court ordered the Election Commission to turn over all of the electoral bond data in a sealed cover on the final day of the case’s hearing. It was ordered by the Supreme Court on March 11 to keep the records pertaining to electoral bonds in the election commission’s office. Therefore, in order for EC to keep these documents, EC has asked for their return. On March 14, the Election Commission released information about the electoral bonds that the State Bank of India had given it. All of the electoral bond data was provided by the SBI in accordance with the SC’s directive.

All of the aforementioned occurred as a result of the February 2024 Supreme Court ruling that declared the electoral bonds unconstitutional due to the failure to disclose information about political party funding, which violates citizens’ right to information.