The SC on February 15 struck down the electoral bond scheme and asked SBI to furnish details of donors and parties to the EC by March 6. The EC would make the data public by March 13.
Former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said on Thursday that the details of who bought electoral bonds, when and for how much, and which parties deposited EBs, with the date and amount, was available to State Bank of India, but matching each EB with its recipient was a task that was impossible.
Garg, who was Economic Affairs Secretary when the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018 was being formulated by the department in 2017, told The Indian Express that SBI’s application to the Supreme Court Monday seeking 3 months more to provide data, was a “cooked up excuse”. The SC on February 15 struck down the electoral bond scheme and asked SBI to furnish details of donors and parties to the EC by March 6. The EC would make the data public by March 13.
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Garg said the SC had asked SBI for details of bonds bought, the date and the amount. While the SBI application said it would need till June 30 to match the donors with the donations as the data was held in physical form in separate silos, Garg said this was not something the SC asked for. He said the bank was trying to lead the court into a “wild goose chase”.
“Even if one takes into account they may not have entered the denomination separately, the information of who bought, on what date, how much of the electoral bond is available on the computer. Similarly, who deposited, for how much of the EB amount, and on which date, that’s also available on the computers as that was deposited in their accounts. That’s all the SC has asked for…,” he said.
“The donor name is available for the amount of EB purchased, what is not available is for which particular bond, who bought it. Since all bonds have come back to SBI, even if you get access to a bond, you can’t determine who had purchased this bond and who had deposited it. So what SBI is saying is that ‘we will need this much time to make this connection’, they will never be able to do it. It is a cooked up excuse.”
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 08-03-2024 at 04:05 IST
