Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge has accused the BJP of using State Bank of India, the largest bank in the country, as a shield to hide its dubious dealings through electoral bonds. He also reiterated the allegation that the government has “bulldozed” every institution, be it the Reserve Bank of India, Election Commission, Parliament or the Opposition to fill its treasuries and now “trying to use SBI to bulldoze the Supreme Court’s judgement.”

This remark comes a day after SBI appealed SC to extend publishing the list of electoral bond donors to 30th June 2024 citing that the deadline of 6th March is not sufficient for decoding, compiling and comparing 22,217 electoral bonds.

On 15th February 2024, the Supreme Court of India pronounced electoral bonds as “unconstitutional” and a violation of Right to Information and Freedom of Speech, and ordered SBI to immediately stop issuing such bonds. SC also directed SBI to submit all details of the electoral bonds by 6th March 2024, which it said should be published by the Election commission on its website.

Read more: Supreme court declares electoral bonds ‘unconstitutional’, directs SBI to stop issuing them

Alleging that the BJP wants it to be done after Lok Sabha elections, Kharge asked, “Isn’t the Modi Govt conveniently hiding BJP’s shady dealings where contracts of highways, ports, airports, power plants etc were handed over to Modi ji’s cronies in lieu of these opaque electoral bonds?”

He also questioned why the SBI need four months to collate the information which experts claim can be done in just 24 hours.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had on Monday questioned why SBI want this information not to be made public before the elections?

“Asking for time till 30th June for information which can be retrieved with one click shows that there is nothing black in the pulses, the entire pulses are black,” Gandhi said. “This is the ‘last attempt’ to hide Modi’s ‘real face’ before the elections,” he added.