The Prime Minister as well as the finance minister has assured the nation on many occasions that the “phone banking” era between 2004 and 2014—an euphemism for political interference in banking decisions—has been buried by this government. They must have walked the talk, so it can be assumed that no phone call would have gone to the State Bank of India (SBI), instructing it to procrastinate on submitting information on electoral bonds as asked for by the Supreme Court of India (SC).
What then explains the “Banker to every Indian” playing hide and seek with the apex court, forcing the latter to issue a third direction to the bank regarding the uncovering of data in the electoral bonds case? It’s an uncomfortable question, but the country’s largest bank must answer it to remove the cloud of confusion over its approach on the issue. After all, SBI’s website takes credit for delivering “cutting-edge digital services to millions of customers.”
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In this case, it didn’t even require any cutting-edge technology prowess. It only needed pure common sense and the ability to collate the information already available digitally with the bank. It wasn’t such a mammoth exercise anyway—as per the details provided by the bank itself, 22,217 electoral bonds were issued. As each bond would have two sets of information—donors and receivers—this would imply a total of 44,434 information sets.
Also Read Chinese Perceptions of India India’s agri-tech revolution is leaving women farmers behind Making farming profitable “Mission Karmayogi: A Philosophical Blueprint for Transformative Public Service” A bank with 2,35,000 employees could have surely deployed a few additional hands to make sure that the work to collate the information sets was completed within the court’s original deadline. Instead, in its affidavit to the SC asking for three more months—the Lok Sabha elections would be over by then—the bank sought refuge in the excuse of “practical difficulties with the decoding exercise.” It was a laughable excuse, that too just two days before the expiry of the deadline, and didn’t take SC much time in dismissing the plea.
It’s inconceivable that the SBI brass couldn’t read the writing on the wall and chose to follow the court’s order in letter and notably not in spirit: it let people know as little as possible. While submitting the details of donor names, amounts and dates in one file and the names of the receiving parties and the total amounts they received in another, SBI made sure that there was no bridge between the two. That’s because the bank didn’t furnish the unique numbers attached to the bonds, without which the link between the donor and the political party that encashed the bond would remain invisible. The court has now called SBI’s bluff.
In any case, the SC’s order was straightforward. The bank was asked to compile details it was always required to keep and give these to the Election Commission by March 6. But in its application, SBI asked for more time to carry out value addition on the data. But SC’s order didn’t ask for it—it just asked the bank to hand over information it was anyway expected to maintain. No one knows why the bank wanted to be more loyal than the king by wanting more time to match donor details with redemption by political parties.
It’s now crystal clear that SBI didn’t divulge the unique number, often referred to as the “matching code”, as it could have almost immediately established a connection between the purchaser of the bond and the beneficiary political party. The decision is particularly surprising as these unique numbers are recorded and SBI conducts an audit trail every financial year. What was the big deal then in compiling and matching the data of the purchaser and the political parties?
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One marvels at SBI’s perseverance in trying to put as many roadblocks as possible in making sure that the information is delayed. Consider this: while arguing for an extension of time, the SBI counsel had submitted that in order to keep the details of electoral bonds purchased secure, they were maintained in physical form, and not digitally. Also, he argued, the name of the purchaser and the details of the purchase were kept in separate locations. But the court was quick to point out that all of this information was still sent to the main SBI branch in Mumbai, and could be found there. Further, each time a bond was purchased, the buyer was required to submit details through a Know Your Customer (KYC) process which, the court said, implies that the information is available to SBI. The bank’s counsel obviously found it difficult to argue against such a valid observation, but that didn’t stop him from trying his luck again. The only difference in the new line of argument was that the additional time sought was brought down from three months to three weeks!
A trove of documents, which transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra had shared with The Collective, show SBI was much more nimble-footed when it was asked by the central government to provide data on electoral bonds—sometimes within 48 hours after the deadline to encash the bonds ended. This prompted Subhash Chandra Garg, former finance secretary, to term SBI’s excuse for dithering on submission of information as the “lamest” he has come across. Garg should know as he oversaw the formulation and implementation of the Electoral Bonds scheme in 2017 and 2018.
The moot point is what the Chief Justice of India said while reversing the electoral bond scheme in February: “Information about funding of political parties is essential for the effective exercise of the choice of voting.” The 212-year-old bank has a rich heritage and brings unparalleled scale. But even SBI’s biggest admirers would find it hard to deny that its demurral on the issue has delivered a few hard knocks on its credibility. In the process, it has also damaged the cause of electoral transparency.
The Prime Minister as well as the finance minister has assured the nation on many occasions that the “phone banking” era between 2004 and 2014—an euphemism for political interference in banking decisions—has been buried by this government. They must have walked the talk, so it can be assumed that no phone call would have gone to the State Bank of India (SBI), instructing it to procrastinate on submitting information on electoral bonds as asked for by the Supreme Court of India (SC).
What then explains the “Banker to every Indian” playing hide and seek with the apex court, forcing the latter to issue a third direction to the bank regarding the uncovering of data in the electoral bonds case? It’s an uncomfortable question, but the country’s largest bank must answer it to remove the cloud of confusion over its approach on the issue. After all, SBI’s website takes credit for delivering “cutting-edge digital services to millions of customers.”
In this case, it didn’t even require any cutting-edge technology prowess. It only needed pure common sense and the ability to collate the information already available digitally with the bank. It wasn’t such a mammoth exercise anyway—as per the details provided by the bank itself, 22,217 electoral bonds were issued. As each bond would have two sets of information—donors and receivers—this would imply a total of 44,434 information sets.
A bank with 2,35,000 employees could have surely deployed a few additional hands to make sure that the work to collate the information sets was completed within the court’s original deadline. Instead, in its affidavit to the SC asking for three more months—the Lok Sabha elections would be over by then—the bank sought refuge in the excuse of “practical difficulties with the decoding exercise.” It was a laughable excuse, that too just two days before the expiry of the deadline, and didn’t take SC much time in dismissing the plea.
It’s inconceivable that the SBI brass couldn’t read the writing on the wall and chose to follow the court’s order in letter and notably not in spirit: it let people know as little as possible. While submitting the details of donor names, amounts and dates in one file and the names of the receiving parties and the total amounts they received in another, SBI made sure that there was no bridge between the two. That’s because the bank didn’t furnish the unique numbers attached to the bonds, without which the link between the donor and the political party that encashed the bond would remain invisible. The court has now called SBI’s bluff.
In any case, the SC’s order was straightforward. The bank was asked to compile details it was always required to keep and give these to the Election Commission by March 6. But in its application, SBI asked for more time to carry out value addition on the data. But SC’s order didn’t ask for it—it just asked the bank to hand over information it was anyway expected to maintain. No one knows why the bank wanted to be more loyal than the king by wanting more time to match donor details with redemption by political parties.
It’s now crystal clear that SBI didn’t divulge the unique number, often referred to as the “matching code”, as it could have almost immediately established a connection between the purchaser of the bond and the beneficiary political party. The decision is particularly surprising as these unique numbers are recorded and SBI conducts an audit trail every financial year. What was the big deal then in compiling and matching the data of the purchaser and the political parties?
One marvels at SBI’s perseverance in trying to put as many roadblocks as possible in making sure that the information is delayed. Consider this: while arguing for an extension of time, the SBI counsel had submitted that in order to keep the details of electoral bonds purchased secure, they were maintained in physical form, and not digitally. Also, he argued, the name of the purchaser and the details of the purchase were kept in separate locations. But the court was quick to point out that all of this information was still sent to the main SBI branch in Mumbai, and could be found there. Further, each time a bond was purchased, the buyer was required to submit details through a Know Your Customer (KYC) process which, the court said, implies that the information is available to SBI. The bank’s counsel obviously found it difficult to argue against such a valid observation, but that didn’t stop him from trying his luck again. The only difference in the new line of argument was that the additional time sought was brought down from three months to three weeks!
A trove of documents, which transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra had shared with The Collective, show SBI was much more nimble-footed when it was asked by the central government to provide data on electoral bonds—sometimes within 48 hours after the deadline to encash the bonds ended. This prompted Subhash Chandra Garg, former finance secretary, to term SBI’s excuse for dithering on submission of information as the “lamest” he has come across. Garg should know as he oversaw the formulation and implementation of the Electoral Bonds scheme in 2017 and 2018.
The moot point is what the Chief Justice of India said while reversing the electoral bond scheme in February: “Information about funding of political parties is essential for the effective exercise of the choice of voting.” The 212-year-old bank has a rich heritage and brings unparalleled scale. But even SBI’s biggest admirers would find it hard to deny that its demurral on the issue has delivered a few hard knocks on its credibility. In the process, it has also damaged the cause of electoral transparency.
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