India’s Supreme Court has ordered the State Bank of India (SBI) to submit all details of electoral bonds, including unique codes linking donors to political parties, just a month before the country’s general elections.
The seven-year-old election funding system, called “Electoral Bonds”, allowed individuals and companies in India to donate money to political parties anonymously and without any restrictions.
In February, the Supreme Court overturned the opaque system, calling it “unconstitutional.”
In its order on Monday, the Supreme Court gave the SBI till Thursday to provide the Election Commission of India with the unique identification numbers of the bonds so that the donors can be matched with the beneficiaries.
“You have to disclose all the details… we have to have it final,” said Chief Justice DY Chandrachud.
Last week, the commission released some data on donations made since April 2019 under the funding mechanism. Some of India’s biggest companies, such as Vedanta Ltd, Bharti Airtel, RPSG Group and Essel Mining, have been among the biggest political donors over the past five years, data shows.
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But last week’s figures did not link donors to recipients, although they showed almost half of all donations went to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which will seek a rare third term in seven-phase elections. starts April 19.
Meanwhile, three industry bodies – Confederation of Indian Industry; Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry; and the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) – sought to prevent the court from releasing information about who donated to which party.
But the court did not listen to their pleas.
