In the ongoing case of a parliamentary mandate to disengage unique alphanumeric codes on receipts of electoral bonds, the Supreme Court has applied a considerable measure. On Friday last week, the court issued a notice to the State Bank of India (SBI) with an order not to sell the bond until its 90-day maturity.
This statement was reported by the State Bank of India earlier, which stated that they had supplied the information related to the purchase and redemption of electoral bonds with the Election Commission of India as per their order of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the values subject to discussion were not specified, which finally attracted the attention of the five-judge Constitution bench, presided over by CJI D Y Chandrachud himself. However, these values that were not mentioned finally became a cause of concern.
In his statements, the CJI pointed to the observance of the binding court ruling on this instance, which explicitly called for the SBI to disclose all of the bond’s details, viz., purchaser, amount, and purchase date. One Prashant Bhushan, a petitioner NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms, presented his case in the SBI, in which the SBI emphasizes the bond numbers but leaves out their disclosure. The data was claimed to be stored in different databases.
Mr Mehta, the Attorney General of India, noted that he is not the bank’s lawyer; thus, he wanted the court to issue a notice to the State Bank of India, which was not party to the proceedings but may have a role to play in the case he submitted. The CJI was concerned about the counterproposal for no commitment. The court’s order is to comply with it and provide the bonds.
The court also adopted the operative directions furnishing the order, which point out its general inclusive nature and encompass the dimensions of disclosure. In the wake of the matter, the apex court instructed the State Bank of India to Redirect the registry to hand the data obtained from the poll bonds to the Election Commission of India.
Furthermore, the court issued the Election Commission’s request to digitally archive and store the information held with the court system, guaranteeing that the data would not be lost. The digitized data from the offline forms would be sent back to the Election Commission and uploaded on their website.
The State Bank of India is expected to furnish a reply by Monday; thus, such a directive defeats the purpose of judicial oversight and full disclosure before proceeding with further hearings.
