The Union government forced State Bank of India to accept expired electoral bonds before the 2018 Karnataka elections, Reporters’ Collective reported citing new disclosures by the Election Commission.
Arun Jaitley, the former Union Finance Minister, reportedly pressured the SBI to accept electoral bonds worth Rs 10 crore after his party members walked into the bank to encash expired electoral bonds, said the report.
The Reporters’ Collective, in 2019, based on official records accessed by Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd.), revealed that the SBI permitted an unknown political party to redeem electoral bonds worth Rs 10 crore, even though it occurred two days after the legally mandated 15-day period for bond redemption had lapsed.
Back in 2019, when The Collective initially reported on this issue, the identity of the political party benefiting from the Union Finance Ministry’s actions remained unknown.
However, what they did ascertain was that the “X” party presented expired bonds to the Delhi branch of SBI on May 23, 2018. Following rapid exchanges between the SBI Delhi branch, its corporate headquarters in Mumbai, and the officials of the Union Finance Ministry, the expired bonds were redeemed by the “X” party upon government directives.
Now, disclosures from the BJP, as made public by the Election Commission of India, reveal that the Union Finance Ministry’s unconventional interpretation of regulations and its unlawful directives to SBI were aimed at facilitating the encashment of Rs 10 crore worth of expired bonds by the saffron party.
