Today in Politics: SBI disclosure set to ‘match’ parties to donors via electoral bonds

A week after the State Bank of India (SBI) and the Election Commission (EC) published the details on the companies and individuals who purchased electoral bonds and the parties that redeemed them in separate lists, the Supreme Court has directed the government bank to disclose the complete details of the electoral bonds, including the unique bond numbers, by Thursday.

With the disclosures on Thursday, the full extent of the electoral bonds scheme is likely to become clear as the unique code on each bond will directly match the donors to the recipient parties.

A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud directed the SBI chairman to file an affidavit before it by 5pm on Thursday indicating that the bank has disclosed all the details. The EC is expected to publish the data on its website shortly after.

“We had asked all details to be disclosed by the SBI, which includes electoral bond numbers as well. Let SBI not be selective in disclosure,” the bench said on Monday.

In its landmark verdict on February 15, the Supreme Court had scrapped the electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordered the disclosure of the donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients by March 13. The court also rejected the SBI’s request for a delay, after which the details were published on March 14.

In context: The previous disclosures on electoral bonds – first by the SBI and EC and then by some parties themselves – showed that the 22,217 electoral bonds that were purchased by donors between April 1, 2019, and February 15 this year amounted to a total of Rs 12,156 crore, of which almost half came from the top 20 donors alone.

A large number of donors operate in