Electoral Bonds: Supreme Court rejected SBI’s petition seeking time extension

State Bank of India (SBI) has received a big blow from the Supreme Court on Monday (March 11, 2024) in the electoral bond case. The country’s apex court rejected SBI’s application in which it had sought extension of the deadline till June 30 for providing details of electoral bonds encashed by political parties. During this time, the Supreme Court ordered SBI to provide complete data to the Supreme Court by tomorrow i.e. March 12, 2024.

While giving the order, Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud said that ‘we are rejecting SBI’s application. Give the data available till tomorrow i.e. 12th March. The Election Commission should publish it by March 15. We are not taking contempt action against SBI right now but if it does not comply now, we will file a contempt case.’

At the same time, during the hearing, when SBI demanded time from the Supreme Court, the court said where is the problem? You have a sealed envelope, open it and provide the data to the Supreme Court. SBI lawyer Harish Shalve said, “We have requested for extra time. As per the order, we have stopped giving electoral bonds. There is no problem in giving the data but it will take some time to organize them.”

Explaining the reason behind this, he further said, “The reason for this is that we were told earlier that it would remain secret, so very few people had information about it. This was not available to everyone in the bank.”