Hinting that there is a nexus between the ruling BJP government and the State Bank of India (SBI) chairman, former general secretary of the All India Bank Officers' Confederation Thomas Franco called the central bank’s ask for time till June 30 to furnish details of electoral bonds an ‘utter lie’. SBI had filed an extension application against the Supreme Court’s original deadline of March 6 and said it needs more time to decode, compile, and compare over 44 thousand (44,434) information sets.
In an interview with TNM’s Shabbir Ahmed, Thomas Franco said that the Supreme Court should not accept SBI’s arguments. “An RTI query had revealed that the bank had updated its system for the electoral bonds scheme. How can the bank now say it needs more time? The moment a customer comes to purchase a bond, even if it’s in physical form, it would be printed. Apart from that, A KYC norm would be followed and the money would be transferred from somebody’s account. Automatically, it is updated on the system. Even when a political party is encashing the electoral bond, they have to come through the bank itself. The transaction cannot be held back even for an hour. Mumbai Branch has every detail of the transactions as it is accounted for,” he said.
Franco pointed out that even though governments in the past have exerted pressure on SBI, the way in which the SBI chairman was a party to the decision makes this a serious matter. “There is a system that has to be followed. Why should he try to help the government even when the Supreme Court has issued directions? It is very clear the time sought coincides with the date the elections would be over. They don’t want the public to know to whom these bonds were issued and to which political parties. Once the list comes out, we will know the parties who bought the electoral bonds,” he said.
The Supreme Court, on February 15, ruled that electoral bonds are illegal and violate voters’ fundamental Right to Information. The apex court then ordered SBI to stop issuing them and furnish details such as the date the bonds were purchased on, the names of those who purchased them, and their denominations. The court also ordered the bank to submit the details of bonds encashed by political parties by March 6.
Watch the full interview here: