Electoral Bonds: Oppn slams SBI for move to delay data

Hyderabad: The delay by the State Bank of India in submitting the list of those who had purchased electoral bonds to the apex court by March 6 has drawn severe criticism from various quarters.

While the Congress feels that this was a deliberate attempt by the BJP-led Union government to hide the information till the completion of the Lok Sabha elections, lest it may dent their target of 370 seats, banking circles feel that it could affect the image of the biggest and well-trusted bank in the country.

A retired official from the SBI on condition of anonymity said that banks are now fully automated as India is on par with developed countries in use of technology. The banks close their balance reports every day. This is mandatory for every bank employee. The procedure is that the moment the purchaser comes to purchase any instrument, the KYC norm is followed, money is transferred to somebody's account and then automatically it gets posted in the system and a bearer bond is issued which can be given to any person and that person can give it to any political party of his choice.

While issuing bonds, there will be a transaction number. Everything is reconciled on the same day. Hence, consolidation of data should not be a major problem for a bank, he felt.

On the other hand, Congress senior leader Mallu Ravi said the SBI was going against the spirit of the Supreme Court judgment. Banks have all the information regarding the electoral bonds. Apparently there appears to be some political pressure in the delay in the disclosure of details, he felt. The time sought by the SBI for submitting the list is another three or four months. It is clear that they want to hold it back till the general elections are over, he said.

“It is an attempt to hide facts from the people of India by the BJP which claims that its government is a transparent government, he said. He further said that it is unbelievable that in an era of technology and AI, it would take three to four months to gather the details. If a customer misses his credit card payment or EMI by a day, he gets a notification indicating the penalty he has to pay. But in this case, the SBI wants three months to submit the list to the court.

The SBI in its application had said that retrieval of information from ‘each silo’ and the procedure of matching the information of one silo to that of the other would be time consuming exercise. Decoding electoral bonds and matching the donors to the donations made would be a complex process.

Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) Chairman Prof T Sastry said, “We don’t like what the SBI has said. India is a powerhouse in information technology. I don’t see any reason why the SBI needs so much time. SBI, if at all they had any apprehensions, they should have said it on day one or day two of the judgment. They cannot say it on March 4 when the deadline was March 6,” he added.