New Delhi, Mar 11: A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the State Bank of India\u2019s plea seeking extension of time and directed it to furnish the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission by close of business hours on March 12.
A bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud also directed the EC to publish the details shared by the bank on its official website by 5 pm on March 15.
During the hearing, the bench, also comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala, and Manoj Misra, took note of the submissions of senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for the SBI, that more time was needed for collating the details and matching them as the information were kept in two different silos with its branches.
He further said if the matching exercise is to be done away with, the SBI can complete the exercise within three weeks.
The bench said it had not directed the SBI to match the details of donors and donee with other information.
The SBI has to just open the sealed cover, collate the details and give the information to the Election Commission, the apex court said.
It also asked the bank about the steps taken by it for complying with the directions given by the apex court in its February 15 judgment.
\u201cIn the last 26 days, what steps have you taken? Your application is silent on that,\u201d the bench said.
It asked the SBI to do a \u201cplain disclosure\u201d as per the court\u2019s judgment.
In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, a five-judge Constitution bench scrapped the Centre\u2019s electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it \u201cunconstitutional\u201d and ordered disclosure by the Election Commission of donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients by March 13.
The SBI had sought an extension till June 30 to disclose the details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties before the scheme was scrapped.
A separate plea, seeking initiation of contempt action against the SBI, was also heard by the bench. (Agencies)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, Mar 11: A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the State Bank of India\u2019s plea seeking extension of time and directed it to furnish the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission by close of business hours on March 12.A bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-national"},"yoast_head":"\n