Supreme Court Order on Electoral Bonds: After a long legal battle, SBI has finally exposed the secret of electoral bonds. After the strictness of the Supreme Court, SBI has submitted the list of donors donating to political parties to the Election Commission. Following the order of the Supreme Court, the details of electoral bonds were handed over to the Election Commission. The Supreme Court on Monday strongly reprimanded SBI and ordered it to give the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission before the end of working hours on March 12. 

SBI scared of Supreme Court's ‘Hunter’

According to the order of the Supreme Court, the Election Commission will have to publish the information shared by the bank on its official website by 5 pm on March 15. According to sources, following the order of the Supreme Court, SBI has submitted the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission before 5 pm. SBI has issued electoral bonds worth Rs 16 thousand 518 crore in 30 installments since the launch of the scheme in 2018. 

The court had canceled the scheme on 15 February

While hearing a PIL, the Supreme Court had canceled the government's electoral bond scheme on 15 February last month. There was a provision in this scheme that any anonymous person or organization could fund any political party. 

Declaring this scheme unconstitutional, the Supreme Court had ordered SBI to submit to the Election Commission the details of donors purchasing electoral bonds and parties receiving funds. After this, the Commission should upload those details on its website, so that the common people can also know from where and how much funding is coming to which party. 

The bank had asked for time till June 30

In the hearing held in the Supreme Court on Monday, SBI termed this work as complex and asked for time till June 30. However, the Supreme Court did not accept the bank's argument and rejected its application. Also, the bank management was ordered to hand over all the details related to the electoral bonds to the Election Commission under any circumstances by Tuesday evening, otherwise contempt action can be initiated against its MD. 

Now after SBI has submitted the details to the Election Commission, it is expected that the Election Commission will upload it on its website by March 15. After this, the people of the country will be able to know about the funding of political parties and the donors who give them money. 

Scheme to provide the option of cash donation

Let us tell you that to increase transparency in political funding, the Modi government had introduced the electoral bond scheme. Under this, political parties were given the option of electoral bonds as an alternative to cash donations. For this, nodal bank SBI was made. SBI made the first sale of such bonds in March 2018. Any person or organization could buy this bond from SBI and donate it to any party. 

Questions were being raised due to a lack of transparency

However, all this work was confidential, due to which questions were being raised on this scheme. The ADR organization, which filed the petition in the Supreme Court, said that there is a complete lack of transparency in the scheme. Common people can never know who donated how much to which party. This is directly promoting corruption.