During the last few days, the country's largest PSB has been in news for wrong reasons! All that the bank did was to obey directives from government and act as the government's agent in issue and redemption of electoral bonds! However, when the plea challenging the entire scheme was allowed by the SC who termed it illegal, the saga of SBI started! The court order to SBI to submit all the data pertaining to electoral bonds to election commission was the starting point. Obviously, SBI had not developed any matching mechanism as government had offered privacy to the purchasers of the bonds. However , the Bank took its own time to inform this position to the court, (which was.done on the last day of the time.granted!) which apparently infuriated them.
Here some points need to be pondered upon.
1. If SBI had submitted inability to furnish the matched data earlier, would.the SC have been satisfied or would the court have taken cognizance of the same.before the next hearing date fixed?
2. What did sc want to achieve by asking SBI to submit the entire data? Even if the fully matched data was made available , would anybody be able to confirm that the purchaser of the bond was.the person or.entity who donated it? It may be remembered that the bonds were bearer in nature and.could.have changed hands any number of times, before redemption!
And it.may also be seen that the parties had already declared the amount received by then through the bonds. If the court really wanted the country to know who had.contributed how much to each party, court could.have simply asked.the parties to submit their receipt.books for verification, I feel.
As a former SBI staff, I feel at least the court could have avoided passing unwanted comments against the Bank, when the banks hands were tied to back to.make a defence.for.itself!
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