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kavyamanohar

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may i please my lord? yes. i appear for state bank, and we need a little more time to comply with your lordship's order.

the sbi should submit details of political parties which have received contribution through the electoral bonds since the interim order of the court of 12th april till the date to the eci.

no. no. in that, my lord, your lordships please see that sentence.

we have no desire at all to try and expand our own job, my lord.

please see 76. this, by itself, is creating difficulties.

my lord, your lordships say - 'the detail shall include date of purchase of bond, no problem. but the moment i have to give the detail of the name with the bond number, that is taking time because we have deliberately put these into silos.' if your lordships want only the details of who purchase the bonds, we can give that straight up.

mr. salve, our judgement is dated 15th of february, 2024.

we are now on the 11th of march.

yes, my lord. in the last 26 days, what extent of matching has been done by you?

what steps have you taken in the last 26 days?

the application is absolutely silent on that.

we can put a detailed affidavit on that my lord because i am not...

that should be no problem my lord.

it should have been disclosed in the affidavit.

i agree, my lord. it is state bank of india, which is coming to us, we expect that there should be a degree of candour on the part of the state bank of india, that this is what the work which we have done...

the work is at this stage... we need an extension of time to carry out the balance of the exercise, which remains.

we have sought to explain the problem, and the work is going on.

because each form... it will have to be form by form.

work is going on to what extent you have reached ?

my lord, work is going on form by form.

they will... if your lordships want, i can give you the exact detail of how many we have covered and how many more we can cover.

but they did a rough calculation, my lord, it will take about three months more.

because i will tell, my lord my other concern.

sbi must disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by the political party, which will include data of encashment and denomination of encashment of each bond.

i have another big concern, my lord.

i cannot make a mistake in this.

i'll get sued by the donor... i'll get sued by people, because i cannot by mistake say, "a got it, when b had it." you are doing under the highest court of this country, so where is the question of you being sued?

i am sorry, my lord? whatever you are doing, you are doing under the directions of highest court of the country...

no. no. no, my lord. if i make a mistake, if i say mr. x got it instead of mr. y got it, in a hurry to give the numbers...

i could create havoc there because ultimately...

as we take it, mr. salve, you are accepting that there's no difficulty in giving names of the donors who purchase the bonds and the amount they purchased the bonds.

you have got no difficulty having giving details of the political parties who have purchased the particular bonds.

the only difficulty is matching the bond, purchased bond, with that.

but in 26 days, you must have carried out at least some, say 10,000 bonds you have been able to collate...

the only problem which we are now trying to collate the information and create is because we are having to actually reverse a whole process.

5000 bonds you have been able to collate...

quite frankly, what i saw, they were struggling with it.

they were making charts, which we saw were not matching and...

i will tell, my lord, what has happened.

i will tell, my lord, candidly what has happened.

if i'm not mistaken, it was pointed out to us that the bonds had some number which under some instrument, they were able to...

that is all has to be done.

yes, yes, yes. that number is not to be found in the application for purchase or in the first set of documents.

the problem is that number, when number was generated, that number has been scrambled and put elsewhere, and that number has been kept secret.

now my lord, putting that will require tracing it into each transaction.

the standard operating process we had put in, made sure that there was no connection between the date, name of the purchaser in our core banking system, and the bond number, because we, as a bank were supposed, were told that this is supposed to be secret.

at this stage of the interim order and i'm saying what happened at that time.

the kind of information which your lordship asked was a macro information.

that is no problem. in pursuance of the interim order, in pursuance of the interim order, election commission of india has filed details before us...

in whatever they have. ... in separate silos if we can use that expression.

the registry has placed that in a secured, in secured custody with us.

please direct them to open it here right now, because since we were deciding a point of constitutional validity, we didn't consider it necessary either during the course of the hearing or thereafter.

so, we can ask them to open it and we will ask the election commission of india to divulge whatever there is and we'll ask sbi to then divulge what we have asked them to do.

whatever has been placed before us... see, mr. sharma, whatever has been placed by you before us in compliance with the judgment we will direct, that to be open right now.

and your lordship directed us to give it to the eci.

so, we'll give it to the eci.

if handful of people also within the bank had access to this this is the kind of information which would have leaked.

or your lordship wants us to file it directly in court.

i think better through the eci. no. mr. salve, you comply with the order of the court...

to give it to the eci. whatever eci has placed in the court, we will direct that to be opened.

we'll ask our court to make a copy of it, a digitized copy, for the safekeeping of the court.

and then we will return it back to the, the rest we'll return it back to eci for them to upload it on their website.

what eci has already, there's no problem.

we will give the eci in the time.

if your lordships in three months we will go and give it to the eci.

and as and when they get it, they can upload it.

we want to make sure we get every bond number right, every donor right.

mr. salve, if you see your application, if we start at para 10, paras 10 to 14 of your application are the key to your application.

this otherwise, is going to create havoc for today for donors who come and say this is not my bond.

i did not purchase this. you put the wrong number on my bond.

i did not give this, so and so.

there's no question of that. once he is given the kyc, he's given the details.

you also have the application. the application will be having the amount for which....

i am sorry my lords. my concern is he purchased bond number x. i by mistake, i put his number at purchasing bond number y. now x may have gone to political party a, y may have gone to political party b. why will that happen, mr. salve?

sbi is the number one bank in the country.

we expect them to be able to handle this.

no, not expect to be handled. we were told, make sure that this doesn't leak.

so, the way we stored the information, the bond number did not get into the core banking system.

what you see in para 10 is that it is "submitted that donor details were kept...." i'm sorry.

if we had been told keep information on this basis, we would have devised our systems accordingly.

if we had kept it like that any senior bank officer could have found out bond numbers and the whole thing would have been out in public domain who has how much.

all the secrecy would have gone... assistant general manager files an affidavit in support of the application to the supreme court for modification an order of a constitution bench.

it is a very serious matter when you ask for modification of an order.

i accept that. i accept that. assistant general manager files an affidavit and tells us that, "look, i'm finding it difficult. the information is maintained in two silos." he has filed the affidavit because he's the man in the spot.

he's the person who has to do this job.

he's the level at which the accounts are kept.

he said you must have the person who knows what he's talking about.

so, give us a little time. we'll do it as per time.

while your lordship is doing that, let me just show one or two things from...

just give me a moment. you, have it?

if i am not mistaken, earlier also, you had given one envelope at the time when the interim order was passed.

i'm sorry, my lord. so that nothing is lost in translation.

then we'll follow them. i'm sorry, i just wanted one clarification as we understand.

my lord, may i say one thing, my lord?

if your lordship turns to your lordship's operative order, there's one way in which you may be able to resolve this.

in (b), your lordship say - 'electoral bonds purchased the detail will include the detail of purchase of electoral bond, the name of purchaser and the denomination. this is one part, my lord. this we have. i mean, we can we can get this in two-three weeks. (c)... my lord, i was saying something. yes, mr. salve. if your lordship turn, there may be a way out around this. if your lordships turns to your lordship's order at para 221, page 76.

yes? there are two parts, (b) and (c).

if you don't have to create a bridge between the two, then within three weeks we can give everything.

so, we'll declare an order. we'll declare an order.

let us do it in the court itself instead of giving...