NEW DELHI, Mar 10: The Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), comprising 79 former
civil servants, have asked the Election Commission of India not to declare elections
until and unless the State Bank of India discloses the details of the secret
electoral bonds it has sold to private parties for the purpose of anonymous
donations to political parties.
The Central Government scheme was struck down by the Supreme Court last month
as unconstitutional and undemocratic. It had also asked the SBI to submit all
the details of the donors and the bonds sold so far to the Election Commission
of India by March 6.
The CCG has described the bank's request to the SC for time until June 30 to
release donor data as 'wholly unjustified'.
The SBI urged the court on March 4 to extend the time for collating donors’
data until June 30, instead of the deadline of March 6. “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,” CCG said in its letter to the ECI.
"For India’s largest bank with 48 crore accounts and boasting high levels of
digitization, a pathetic excuse has been proffered that records were kept manually
and hence the extension sought," it said.
"Subhash Chandra Garg, Finance Secretary at the time of finalization of the
scheme (and a defender of it), has said in interviews that it should not take
more than ten minutes to get the information sought," the letter said.
The CCG said, "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. The media
portals Newslaundry and News Minute have already published material linking
thirty corporates and their purchase of bonds worth about Rs 335 crore in the
previous five years to the blatant misuse of enforcement agencies to make these
corporates fall in line."
The following is the list of signatories to the CCG letter to the CEC:-
Anita Agnihotri, G. Balachandhran, Gopalan Balagopal, Chandrashekar Balakrishnan,
Rana Banerji, Sharad Behar, Aurobindo Behera, Madhu Bhaduri, Nutan Guha Biswas,
Meeran C Borwankar, Ravi Budhiraja, Sundar Burra, Maneshwar Singh Chahal, R.
Chandramohan, Ranjan Chatterjee, Kalyani Chaudhuri, Gurjit Singh Cheema, F.T.R.
Colaso, Anna Dani, P.R. Dasgupta, Pradeep K. Deb, Nitin Desai, Sushil Dubey,
K.P. Fabian, Suresh K. Goel, S.K. Guha, H.S. Gujral, Meena Gupta, Ravi Vira
Gupta, Wajahat Habibullah, Naini Jeyaseelan, Najeeb Jung, Sanjay Kaul, Vinod
C. Khanna, Gita Kripalani, Ish Kumar, Harsh Mander, Aditi Mehta, Shivshankar
Menon, Sonalini Mirchandani, Malay Mishra, Satya Narayan Mohanty, Deb Mukharji,
Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, Gautam Mukhopadhaya, P. Joy Oommen, Amitabha Pande,
Maxwell Pereira, G.K. Pillai, Rajesh Prasad, N.K. Raghupathy, V.P. Raja, V.
Ramani, M. Rameshkumar, K. Sujatha Rao, Satwant Reddy, Vijaya Latha Reddy, Julio
Ribeiro, Aruna Roy, Manabendra N. Roy, Deepak Sanan, S. Satyabhama, N.C. Saxena,
A. Selvaraj, Abhijit Sengupta, Aftab Seth, Ashok Kumar Sharma, Ashok Kumar Sharma,
Navrekha Sharma, Raju Sharma, Avay Shukla, K.S. Sidhu, Tara Ajai Singh, Tirlochan
Singh, Prakriti Srivastava, Anup Thakur, P.S.S. Thomas, Ashok Vajpeyi, Rudi
Warjri.
Meanwhile, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Common Cause have
petitioned the Supreme Court against the SBI for not disclosing the electoral
bond details as directed by the court last month and seeking contempt proceedings.
The Supreme Court on Thursday had said the contempt petition against the SBI
will be heard on March 11.