SBI hands out Electoral Bond data to SC, Shares fall by 2.2%

The State Bank of India, the largest bank in the country, submitted a compliance affidavit with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, a day after it handed over the Electoral Bond data to the Election Commission of India (ECI) as per the order of the court. The SBI also informed the SC that 22,030 electoral bonds were redeemed by the political parties out of the total number of 22,217 bonds purchased between the time duration of 1st April 2023 and 15th February 2024. According to the affidavit the remaining 187 bonds were also redeemed and the amount was sent to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund.

In the compliance affidavit filed by the Chairman of SBI, Dinesh Kumar Khara, it is stated that the bank has provided the ECI with details including the dates of encashment of each electoral bond, the names of the political parties that received the money and the denominations of the bonds as well. The SBI handed over the electoral bond data to the Election Commission in a pen drive containing two PDFs secured with passwords in it while the passwords were given in a separate envelope.

According to the affidavit, 3,346 electoral bonds were purchased from April 1, 2019, to April 11, 2019, and from April 12, 2019, to February 15, 2024, 18,871 bonds were purchased whereas 20,421 bonds were redeemed. In total 22,217 bonds were purchased and 22,030 bonds were redeemed. The SBI has released Rs, 16,518 crore worth of electoral bonds in 30 installments since the scheme of Electoral Bonds came into effect in 2018.

Electoral Bond struck down by Supreme Court

The Supreme Court created a milestone with the verdict of February 15, 2024, where it ruled out the Electoral Bond policy of the Central government which legalized anonymous donations to the political parties of India and called it “unconstitutional” and “violative of RTI (Right to Information)”. On 11th March the SC rejected the SBI’s plea of extending the time for revealing the data of the electoral bonds and issued an order to submit it to the EC within the working hours on 12th March. The court also ordered the EC to publish all the data given by the SBI on its official website by 5 pm on 15th March.

A Stand-out

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is one of the petitioners against the Electoral Bond Scheme the other two being NGOs named Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Common Cause. According to the CPI(M) it has always been against this scheme and stands out as the only political party that has not accepted any donations through the electoral bonds. “The fact is that the CPI(M) has refused to accept electoral bonds on principle. That is why it did not even open a designated SBI account as required by the law to accept electoral bond”, the party said on February 16, 2024.

Stock prices dropped by 2.2%

Meanwhile, the stock price of SBI has fallen by 2.2% to Rs. 743 within a day after the bank filed a compliance affidavit with the Supreme Court concerning the submission of the electoral bond data to the EC. Although the share has been rising by 25% in the past six months it has significantly dropped by 4.5% in the last five days. The stock gave a return of 150% in the past five years and over 40% in the last year.