It took the largest bank in the country 17 days, from February 16 to March 3, to figure out that it cannot provide information by March 6 but will be able to provide it only by June 30.
On the afternoon of March 4, 2024, the State Bank of India (SBI) filed an application in the Supreme Court requesting the court to “Grant time to the Applicant Bank until 30.06.2024 to comply with the directions in its Judgement dated 15.02.2024 in W.P. (C) No. 880 of 2017 and batch.”
This is the judgment in which the Supreme Court directed the SBI to “submit the details of political parties which have received contributions through Electoral Bonds…to the ECI.”
It said that the SBI must disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties and include the date of encashment and the denomination of the electoral bond. The apex court said that the SBI is to submit this information to the ECI within three weeks from the date of this judgment, that is, by March 6, 2024.
On the afternoon of March 4, 2024, the State Bank of India (SBI) filed an application in the Supreme Court requesting the court to “Grant time to the Applicant Bank until 30.06.2024 to comply with the directions in its Judgement dated 15.02.2024 in W.P. (C) No. 880 of 2017 and batch.”
This is the judgment in which the Supreme Court directed the SBI to “submit the details of political parties which have received contributions through Electoral Bonds…to the ECI.”
It said that the SBI must disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties and include the date of encashment and the denomination of the electoral bond. The apex court said that the SBI is to submit this information to the ECI within three weeks from the date of this judgment, that is, by March 6, 2024.
The application makes some startling disclosures, possibly inadvertently. The main one is that some of the data was not stored digitally.
Let the application speak for itself:
“10. It is submitted that donor details were kept in a sealed cover at the designated branches and all such sealed covers were deposited in the Main Branch of the Applicant bank, which is located in Mumbai.
“11. On the other end, each political party was required to maintain a designated account in any of the 29 authorised Branches. It was only in this account that electoral bonds received by that party could be deposited and redeemed. At the time of redemption, the original bond, the pay-in slip would be stored in a sealed cover and sent to the SBI Mumbai Main Branch.
…
“13. It is submitted that the retrieval of information from each silo and the procedure of matching the information of one silo to that of the other would be a time consuming exercise. The details are stored separately, some of the details such as number of Bonds, etc. are stored digitally while the other set of details such as name of purchaser, KYC etc., are stored physically. The purpose of not storing all details digitally was to ensure that it cannot be gathered easily to achieve the object of the scheme”
The italics were added.
The first thing that astounds is the storage of data in “physical” form, in this day and age.
It is indeed amazing that the SBI expects anyone, least of all the Supreme Court, which has been working very diligently to digitalise its own working, to believe that the largest bank of a country, which is the world leader in UPI (Unified Payments Interface), is keeping such critical data in physical form.
The second is what the application, and in particular paragraph 12 above, says about the internal working of the SBI.
Let us imagine a scenario that (a) a purchaser buys an electoral bond worth Rs 10 crores at the SBI Main Branch at Parliament Street, New Delhi, (b) gives it to an eligible political party in Patna, (c) the political party presents this electoral bond for redemption at the SBI Main Branch at Kolkata where it has a designated account for this purpose (which it is legally, under the electoral bond scheme, as it existed, permitted to do) within 15 days of the issue of the electoral bond by SBI New Delhi.
The application, and paragraph 12 in particular, seem to indicate that:
(a) SBI New Delhi will send the “donor details” such as the KYC particulars of the purchaser to SBI Main Branch in Mumbai in a sealed cover in a physical form, without keeping a digital record, and
(b) SBI Kolkata will deposit Rs 10 crores in the designated account of the political party, apparently without any reference to or verification from the SBI New Delhi or Mumbai, and send “the original bond, the pay-in slip…in a sealed cover…to the SBI Mumbai Main Branch”, as stated in paragraph 11 of the application.
Yet another interesting facet is the chronology, though it is very short. The direction to provide this information to the Election Commission of India was given to the SBI by the Supreme Court on February 15, and the application was filed on March 4. It took the largest bank in the country 17 days, from February 16 to March 03, to figure out that it cannot provide the information by March 6 but will be able to provide it only by June 30!
Efficiency, anyone?
There are other anomalies in the application. What is deeply saddening is how predictable the application is. The SC judgment was delivered on February 15, 2024. Speculation appeared very soon thereafter that ways may be found to impede the implementation of the judgment.
Another piece said “Apprehensions were expressed in some quarters soon after the judgment about the possibility that the disclosures directed by the court may actually not happen and ways may be found to prevent them from happening. The fact that these apprehensions may not be completely baseless is shown in a report published in a leading newspaper”.
This very issue was also discussed in a podcast on February 16.
The matter now rests with the highest court in the land. It remains to be seen if this momentous judgment is taken to its logical conclusion or will it be a victim of one of the best-known laws of C. Northcote Parkinson – “Delay is the deadliest form of denial”.
The article was originally published in The Wire.
Picture Credit: State Bank of India – Mumbai Main Branch by Appaiah/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)