Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan flags SBI not sharing code that would have linked donors to political parties

With the State Bank of India (SBI) not sharing the unique alphanumeric code printed on each electoral bond – which would have helped match donors with political parties – the petitioners say they are likely to knock on the Supreme Court’s doors once more.

Prashant Bhushan, who had argued the case on behalf of the petitioner, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), in Supreme Court pushing for electoral bonds to be made public, told The Indian Express that the petitioners are likely to approach the top court to press for the unique bond number against each purchase and redemption to help link each donor with the political party that benefited.

“The SBI has the unique number. We will probably go to court to demand for the same. This was implicit in the Supreme Court judgement,” he said.

In a post on X, Bhushan wrote: “The Info of Electoral Bonds uploaded by EC (which they say is as received from SBI), does not give the serial number of the bonds, which is necessary for finding who gave bond to whom. This was implicit in SC judgement. SBI affidavit said this info is recorded though in separate silos.”

Bhushan’s comments came after the Election Commission of India uploaded on its website the data on electoral bonds as received from the State Bank of India.

ADR co-founder Jagdeep Chhokar said, “We are trying to figure out what we can do with this data. Rather than saying what cannot be done, we are seeing what’s possible to do with it before we seek more information. We are not going to make a call in a hurry.”