What is the unique number of electoral bond?
The issue of electoral bonds i.e. election donations is a hot topic. On March 16, the Supreme Court had given notice to State Bank of India on not issuing unique numbers of electoral bonds and sought its reply by March 18. Along with this, the Supreme Court has also directed the Election Commission to immediately upload the information received from the bank on its website. Regarding this, the Supreme Court on Monday, March 18 once again reprimanded the State Bank of India (SBI), saying that it cannot adopt a selective approach in this matter and it will have to disclose the details of all the electoral bonds held by it. Which also includes alpha-numeric unique numbers that will reveal the link between the buyer and the recipient political party.
The court also asked the State Bank of India to submit all the information related to the unique bond numbers of the electoral bonds to the court by March 21. While hearing this case on Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice DY Chandrachud got angry at court lawyer Mathew Nedumpara. “Don’t shout at me, if you want to file a petition, file an application. We are not sitting here to hear you,” the CJI told Nedumpara during the hearing on electoral bonds.
What are these unique alpha-numeric numbers?
Alphanumeric code is just like when you create a password or some ID etc., it contains some alphabets (like a,b,C,d), some numbers (1,2,3,4) or/and @, $, #. Like creating code by combining special characters. Similarly, when someone buys a bond to donate to a party, the bond given by SBI also has a similar code.
The unique bond number is a number written on each bond, which is impossible to see with the naked eye. It can be seen only in ultraviolet rays (UV Rays).
Each Electoral Bond is assigned a unique alphanumeric code which, when issued by SBI, will facilitate correlation of donors with the respective receiving parties.
Currently, SBI has given data to the Election Commission in two silos – donors who purchased the bonds and recipients who encashed them – and all links are missing, the report claims.
According to The Indian Express report, the one-on-one correspondence between who bought the electoral bonds and who redeemed each bond could only be established by having each EB’s unique alpha-numeric number, which can only be detected under ultraviolet light. Becomes visible, becomes available.
The bench said, “There is no doubt that SBI was required to disclose all the details. We clarify that this will include the alpha-numeric number and serial number, if any, of the bond redeemed.”
Senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for SBI, told the apex court that if the number of electoral bonds has to be disclosed, we will do so.
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