NEW DELHI: A day after the State Bank of India (SBI) approached the Supreme Court seeking more time to disclose details of electoral bonds, the Congress launched a broadside against the Centre alleging that “the Modi government is using SBI as a shield to hide its dubious dealings”.
The SBI on Monday moved top court seeking an extension till June 30 to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties. After scrapping the electoral bond scheme last week, the SC had directed the SBI to furnish the details to the Election Commission of India (EC) by March 6.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge alleged that Modi government is trying to use SBI to bulldoze the Supreme Court’s judgment. “No less than the Supreme Court had struck down the Modi government’s ‘black money conversion scheme’ of electoral bonds, holding it ‘unconstitutional’, ‘violative of RTI’ and ‘illegal’, and asked the SBI to furnish donor details by March 6,” he said.
“But the BJP wants it to be done after the Lok Sabha elections by June 30,” he said, adding that the tenure of the Lok Sabha will end on June 16.
Alleging that the BJP was the main beneficiary of the “fraudulent” electoral bonds scheme, Kharge said, “Isn’t the government conveniently hiding the BJP’s shady dealings, where contracts of highways, ports, airports and power plants were handed over to the PM’s cronies in lieu of these opaque electoral bonds? … Experts say that the 44,434 automated data entries of donors can be divulged and matched in just 24 hours. Then why does SBI need four more months to collate this information?”
Echoing the view, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said at a press conference that the BJP has been “afraid” that its “unholy nexus with select corporates” will be exposed as soon as the information about the donors becomes public.
Shrinate questioned why the country’s largest and fully computerised bank needs five months to provide information about electoral bonds when the complete information can be extracted in five minutes with one click.
SBI spent Rs 1.5 crore on software to float EBs: RTI
According to information availed by RTI activist Lokesh Batra, the SBI spent Rs 60,43,005 on ‘IT system development for floating of electoral bonds’ and Rs 60,43,005 on ‘IT system development’. The ‘operational costs’ amounted to Rs 89,72,338. The net cost for floating of EBs was Rs 1,50,15,338.