SC's rebuke: SBI is in hot water
The Supreme Court on Monday pulled up State Bank of India (SBI) for its delay in disclosing details related to electoral bonds. While rejecting SBI’s application for time until 30 June to submit the information, the apex court directed the bank to do it by Tuesday and have the data published on its website by Friday.
“In the last 26 days, what steps have you taken? Your application is silent on that. We expect some candour from the State Bank of India," said chief justice D.Y.
Chandrachud as the head of a five-judge bench hearing the case. The court was displeased enough to warn that a second violation of its deadline would invite contempt proceedings against SBI, the issuer of the bonds it recently scrapped.
To its benefit, though, the court said that it hadn’t asked for a mapping of bond encashment details with donors, an exercise that SBI had said would require time since the two sets of information were kept apart. This was presumably done to ensure that political donations via these bonds couldn’t be traced to specific donors.
Whether this means the promised secrecy of the mechanism will hold firm, however, is unclear. Data-based guesswork is likely to run rife.
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