Former bureaucrats urge EC not to announce LS poll schedule till SBI shares info on electoral bonds

New Delhi, 9/3: Around 80 former bureaucrats on Saturday urged the Election Commission not to announce the schedule for Lok Sabha elections till SBI shares information on the scrapped electoral bonds as mandated by the Supreme Court.

The former civil servants said the SBI’s argument that it cannot collate information before the Lok Sabha elections seems to indicate that it is “shielding the government from any criticism that there was a quid pro quo between the bonds and favoursgiven to some firms or raids/intimidation to pressurise the corporates to fall in line”. In the open letter to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and Election Commissioner Arun Goel, the 79 former bureaucrats under the banner