The Supreme Court must be commended for dismissing an application by the State Bank of India seeking time till June 30 to furnish details of the buyers and beneficiaries of electoral bonds. The five-judge bench had earlier struck down the electoral bonds scheme as ‘unconstitutional’. It had rightly held that the anonymity of donors and their political party beneficiaries impinged on the public's right to information.
The judges also directed the SBI to come forth with the data by March 6, and called on the Election Commission to publish it on its website by March 13. The SBI’s argument that accessing the data was “time-consuming” due to anonymity protocols surrounding the donors was held to be untenable -- its acceptance would have had the effect of negating the original order, whose essence was that crucial information relating to election financing cannot be kept from the public till after the Lok Sabha polls.
The SBI was expected to act as a neutral vendor for the scheme. However, its conduct has raised serious doubts about the bank’s adherence to well-defined norms of financial propriety. In all, Rs 16,518 crore was collected through 22,217 bonds. In a digital world, the information of who purchased these bonds and their face value can be accessed by the bank with the press of a button.
Ditto for the parties that encashed them. The bank’s plea that it would take four months to match the two silos is risible. The top court, questioning the delay in putting the data together, rightly asked the SBI at the March 11 hearing: “In the last 26 days...what steps have been taken by you?”
The electoral bond scheme was introduced in 2018 by the government ostensibly to root out black money and “ensure clean, tax-paid money is coming into the system of political funding through proper banking channels”. The serial legislator-swapping and pulling down of governments India has witnessed in the years since do not exactly conform to any expectation of the grey economy of politics having been shuttered down.
What then was the scheme meant to achieve? Perhaps it was the old 'white' component that went into fulfilling formal needs-- legal’ ones like acquiring real estate, setting up offices et al -- itself a sizeable component. One big concern was the possibility of quid pro quo. Anecdotal data shows an uncanny sequence between threats of raids and prosecution by central agencies and corporate donations. The cure, in short, was proving to be another malaise in more than one way.