ELECTORAL BONDS CASE: SC dismisses SBI Appeal, Asks Bank to Comply by March 12.

ELECTORAL BONDS CASE UPDATE-  The Supreme Court of India ( SC ) on Monday rejected a plea by government-run State Bank of India ( SBI )  for more time to make public names of individuals and companies who donated billions of rupees to political parties through an opaque funding system.

The top court on Monday said the information it sought is readily available with the bank, asking to share it with the Election Commission of India (ECI) “by close of business” on Tuesday.

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The ECI should compile the information and publish the details on its website no later than 5pm (11:30 GMT) on March 12, the five-judge bench ordered.

The electoral bonds, introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2017, were a key method of political funding, allowing individuals and companies to make unlimited and anonymous donations to political parties through certificates bought from the SBI.

The seven-year-old electoral bonds system was challenged by members of the opposition and a civil society group on the grounds that it hindered the public’s right to know who had given money to political parties.

The Supreme Court of India had on Feb. 15 scrapped the seven-year-old election funding system that allowed unlimited and anonymous donations to political parties, calling it “unconstitutional”.

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The court’s decision was a setback for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been the largest beneficiary of the system.

The Association for Democratic Reforms, a nongovernmental organisation that analysed the secret donations made to various political parties between 2018 and March 2022, found that 57 percent of them (about $600m) went to the BJP.