NEW DELHI: With the Friday deadline for
publication
of
electoral bond
details fast approaching, Election Commission has realised it would not be in position to fully comply with
Supreme Court
’s March 11 direction, which included publishing on its website by March 15 the EB data it had supplied in two tranches to SC during pendency of petitions questioning validity of the bonds.
In its application, EC on Thursday said it would comply with the directions to publish SBI-furnished details about EB purchasers and recipient
political parties
, but would not be able to publish the data it had furnished in
sealed cover
to SC as it had not kept any copy thereof in EC office. It requested SC to return the
original documents
in sealed cover to enable publication of the information by March 15.
In compliance of SC’s interim orders of April 12, 2019 and Nov 2, 2023, EC had submitted “(a) in a sealed cover, (containing 106 sealed envelopes); and (b) in sealed boxes, (containing 309 and 214 sealed envelopes respectively) in two tranches”. On Feb 15, SC had quashed EB scheme of 2018 and ordered full publication of data available with
SBI
and EC on the latter’s website. On March 11, the SC had rejected SBI’s plea for extension of the March 6 deadline for furnishing data to EC and directed it to comply with the Feb order by March 12.
In the order, the SC had said, “During pendency of the proceedings before the Constitution bench, ECI had, in compliance with the interim order passed by this court, filed its statements which have been maintained in the custody of the court. Copies of the statements, which were filed by the ECI before this court, would be maintained in the office of the ECI. ECI shall forthwith publish the details of the information, which was supplied to this court in pursuance of the interim orders on its official website.”
English (US) ·