Does SBI Really Need 4 Months To Compile Electoral Bonds Data? Experts Explain (2024)

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Three weeks after the Supreme Court struck down PM Narendra Modi government's electoral bonds scheme and ordered for the details of donors and transactions to be made public, the State Bank of India (SBI), the sole bank authorised to handle the bonds, filed an application to request for an extension till 30 June to reveal the said data.

With the verdict already being seen as a setback for the government, activists, political observers, and the Opposition parties immediately pointed towards the timeline stated by the SBI, highlighting the fact that the data will not be revealed till the general elections conclude.

While the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), one of the four petitioners in the electoral bonds case, is set to challenge the SBI's plea for an extension, the Congress questioned as to who was 'pressurising the SBI' to withhold till 30 June, data that can be revealed by just 'one click'.

The Quint spoke to experts and petitioners in the case to understand the process behind buying electoral bonds, what data was collected and collated, and what could possibly have led to the SBI's plea for an extension of the deadline.

In its judgment dated 15 February, the Supreme Court had ordered that by 6 March, SBI must submit the details of the electoral bonds purchased between 12 April 2019 and 15 February 2024, to the Election Commission.

The court said that the details, which must include the date of purchase of each electoral bond, the donor's name, which party they donated to, and the denomination of the electoral bond purchased, must be made public by the EC by 13 March.

In its application to the apex court on 4 March, two days before the deadline set by the court, the SBI said that 22,217 electoral bonds were issued to various parties between 12 April 2019 to 15 February 2024.

The SBI said that since the redeemed bonds were sent to the main SBI branch in Mumbai by the authorised branches, it has to decode and compile 44,434 (22,217x2) information sets.

Poonam Agarwal, a journalist who has extensively debunked claims of secrecy of electoral bonds, explained the collection of identifiers/data while registering for and purchasing a bond.

"When you buy an electoral bond, you have to go to one of the 29 branches of the SBI where the bonds are sold. Before they hand over the bond to you, they write the hidden unique alphanumeric number in the records that xyz person has purchased bond number – say123," Agarwal told The Quint.

"So, when the person xyz hands the bond to any political party and the political party goes back to the SBI to redeem it, the bank checks the hidden number and the name of the purchaser in the records before redeeming the bond. They also record the name of political party. All these entries and data are recorded in real time," Agarwal explained.

The FAQs issued by the SBI on electoral bonds mention several other identifiers/data points recorded at the time of sale and purchase of the bonds:

• For an individual, the KYC norms, as per the RBI's guidelines, were applicable for all applicants of electoral bonds.

• In addition to application form and pay-in-slip, the applicants were to submit copy of citizenship proof and KYC documents (Aadhaar and PAN), along with originals.

• For firms, organisations, and trusts, the SBI had extensively mentioned a set of key documents as identity proofs.

• To redeem the bonds, the eligible political parties were to have designated 'current accounts' in any of the 29 designated SBI branches authorised to handle the bonds.

When it comes to the collation of identifiers/data points, Professor Jagdeep Chhokar, founder and trustee of ADR, highlighted a key point revealed by the SBI in its application to the SC.

"If somebody goes to any of the 29 designated branches and purchases a bond worth Rs 10 crore, he is free to donate that to any eligible political party. Let us say he gives to a party in Patna and the party takes it and deposits it in its account at its designated branch in Kolkata. The SBI's application says that the bond, the pay-in-slip, and KYC particulars of the individual were stored in the physical form and then sent in a sealed cover to the main branch in Mumbai. This is where I am confused – does it mean that the SBI keeps the bond, pay-in-slip, and KYC information of the donor only in physical form? Or is it also stored digitally?" Chhokar questioned.

"Before the designated branch where the political party is redeeming the donation it received, it would actually verify with the donor's branch first. So, without verification from the donor's branch, it sounds strange that the branch of the political party would just credit that money in their account. It is strange that those two records have not already been tallied," Chhokar said.

RTI activist Commodore Lokesh Batra said that when the SBI takes the KYC details while issuing an electoral bond to a donor, it must have a digital record of it.

"They have the data as to who has purchased a bond and which political party has encashed it. Today, where technology in a bank like SBI does lakhs of transactions across the globe at a faster speed, preparing such data isn't difficult. Starting from KYC itself, the numbers are there. The political party, while encashing that bond, has a slip," Batra told The Quint.

Batra also pointed out that a letter of the SBI dated June 2018, which revealed the net cost of floating electoral bonds, had mentioned allocation of over Rs 60,00,000 for 'IT Systems Development'.

While both Chhokar and Batra indicated that the timeline cited to provide the data may have been done to delay it until after elections, Agarwal said: "All these entries and data are recorded real time. Since it is recorded and maintained real time, there has to be data compiled somewhere in some form. The compilation also has to be real time because they also need it for audit purposes at the end of each financial year."

"The records would be there in 29 different branches. All they need to do is to collect them together, put it in one place, file it, and hand it over to the Election Commission. Now, the point is – it is also a bureaucratic process. So, whether it takes three days, three weeks, or three months, who is going to decide that accurately?" she asked.

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