The bank denied the information citing two exemption clauses given under the Right to Information (RTI) Act — section 8(1)(e) that is related to records held in a fiduciary capacity and section 8(1)(j) that allows withholding personal information.

Batra had also sought the details of the fees paid by the SBI to senior advocate Harish Salve to defend its case against the disclosure of the electoral bonds’ records, citing that the records are held in a fiduciary capacity and the information is personal in nature.

On the question of Salve’s fee, he said the bank has denied information that involves taxpayers’ money.

The EC published the data furnished by the SBI on its website on March 14, with the details of the donors and political parties that redeemed the bonds.On March 15, the apex court pulled up the SBI for not furnishing the complete information by withholding the numbers unique to each electoral bond that would help match the donors with the recipient political parties, saying the bank was “duty-bound” to reveal the information.

A five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud said it had directed the disclosure of all the details of the bonds, including the names of the purchasers, amounts and dates of purchase.

All details have to be furnished by the SBI, the CJI observed, as the court admonished the bank for furnishing incomplete information, a day after the EC put out the entire list of entities that purchased the bonds for making political donations.

The SBI had said a total of 22,217 electoral bonds of varying denominations were purchased by the donors between April 1, 2019 and February 15 this year, of which 22,030 were redeemed by political parties.