SBI shielding Modi govt from criticism on electoral bonds?

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru/New Delhi: The State Bank of India (SBI) requesting the Supreme Court (SC) on Monday that they be given until June 30 to furnish the details of electoral bonds has come in for sharp criticism from the banking sector.

The bank had made the submission before the Apex Court following the landmark February 15 judgement declaring the electoral bonds scheme null and void since it ran counter to constitutional provisions like Right To Information.

The court had also ordered the submission of the details of the bonds, including dates of encashment and denomination of bonds to the Election Commission (EC) by March 6, adding that the EC should post the details on their website by March 13.

SBI replied that they needed more time since gathering and disclosing the data was a massive undertaking, prompting critics to allege that they were being pressured by the Union government.

The Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) on March 4 slammed SBI over its arguments before the SC, demanding that the original deadline be followed.

Former general secretary of the All India Bank Officers’ Confederation (AIBOC) Thomas Franco added to the chorus by telling The News Minute that the SBI’s submission to the SC was a lie.

“It’s an utter lie. State Bank should not have made this statement. I could understand that there is a very big pressure from the Government of India (GOI) on the chairman of the State Bank of India because we have worked in this system for so long. From manual to back office to core banking solutions. State Bank has gone through a transformation. Even in the manual days of accounting, we never required this kind of waiting because every day the bank's books are balanced. We don’t leave the branch without balancing the books and every day we send reports to the higher level,” he said.

“Today, with the core banking solutions, everything is known to the top management. Every day, every second, the transactions are known. So it is not at all correct to say we require 116 days more to collate the data related to the electoral bonds. It is just 22,000 odd numbers,” he added.

The former bureaucrats, who are part of the Constitutional Conduct Group, said that a “pathetic excuse” had been given by “India’s largest bank with 48 crore accounts and boasting high levels of digitisation” that its records were stored manually, reported The Scroll.

The group said that Subhash Chandra Garg, who was the Finance Secretary when the electoral bonds scheme was finalised, had in numerous interviews said that it should not take more than ten minutes to disclose information about the bonds.

“The SBI’s denying this information and indicating that it would not be available before the general elections seems to indicate that the SBI is shielding the Government in power from any criticism that there was a quid pro quo between the bonds and favours given to some firms or raids/ intimidation to pressurize the corporates to fall in line,” it said.