The State Bank of India (SBI) has requested the Supreme Court to extend the deadline till June 30 for giving information about electoral bonds to the Election Commission.

The Supreme Court in a historic judgment last month had struck down the electoral bonds scheme and told SBI to give the information to the Election Commission (EC) by March 6.

The Supreme Court ended the controversial electoral bonds scheme on the grounds that it violated citizens’ right to information. The electoral bonds scheme, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud had said, was unconstitutional and arbitrary and may lead to a quid pro quo arrangement between political parties and donors.

The Supreme Court had ordered SBI to stop issuing these bonds and give details of donations made through this mode to the EC. The poll body was then told to publish this information on its website by March 13.

The Constitution bench of five judges held that the stated objective of fighting black money and maintaining the confidentiality of donors cannot defend the scheme. Electoral bonds, the court said, are not the only way to curb black money.

The electoral bonds scheme was introduced in 2018 with the stated objective of blocking black money from entering the political system.

The then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said the conventional practice of political funding in India was cash donations. “The sources are anonymous or pseudonymous. The quantum of money was never disclosed. The present system ensures unclean money coming from unidentifiable sources. It is a wholly non-transparent system,” he had said. On the confidentiality clause, he had said the disclosure of the donors’ identity would make them go back to the cash option.

Soon after the scheme was implemented, multiple parties challenged it in court. These included CPM, Congress leader Jaya Thakur, and the non-profit Association for Democratic Reforms. They argued that the confidentiality clause came in the way of the citizen’s right to information.

Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy stood up to be counted on a day the BJP was going big with the ‘Modi ka Pariwar” campaign on social media. “Hamare hisaab se Pradhan Mantri matlab bade bhai (According to us, Prime Minister means elder brother),” Mr Reddy said in Adilabad, where he had gone to receive Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Telangana. Then he made his context clear — that states cannot prosper without the Prime Minister’s help and he wanted to bring Telangana on par with Gujarat.

“Only with his (PM Modi’s) help can Chief Ministers take their states forward. It is my request that if Telangana has to progress, if it has to move ahead like Gujarat, your help is required,” he said at Adilabad, where he shared dais with the Prime Minister.

To reach the Prime Minister’s goal of a 5 trillion dollar economy, India needs five metropolitan cities.

“Hyderabad wants to contribute. Please support us in the Metro rail… Just as you developed the Sabarmati river, we want to regenerate our Musi river,” Mr Reddy said to cheers from the audience at gathering where PM Modi laid the launched or laid foundation for Rs 6,697 crore worth of projects.

Mr Reddy said it is the people who ultimately lose when there is friction between the Centre and the states. Politics should be limited to elections only and after the polls the elected leaders should thrive for the development of the state with the help of the Centre, he added.

In a marked departure from the tradition of his predecessor K Chandrasekhar Rao, the Congress Chief Minister flew to the Adilabad airport early this morning to receive the Prime Minister, keeping the traditional protocol.

His address, many said, was a textbook example of political sagacity. He knows the Modi development story has many takers. Instead of being critical of it, he publicly announced that he wants to be a part of it, openly declaring that he will not be on a political warpath, taking a confrontationist approach against the Centre.

Mr Rao, who was the chief of Bharat Rashtra Samithi, had skipped PM Modi’s official visits to the state on several occasions. He suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the Congress in the state elections last year, and was replaced by Mr Reddy, who had led his party’s campaign.
 
The Prime Minister greeted Mr Reddy warmly and shook hands with him after his address. But that did not stop him from attacking the Congress, along with the Bharat Rashtra Samithi. “Changing name from TRS to BRS did not change anything, changing BRS government with a Congress government did not change anything either,” he said.

PM Modi also made a reference to the Kaleshwaram project, saying that even though the Congress has been criticising BRS for alleged big-ticket corruption in the irrigation project, they were not making sensitive documents public.

The Prime Minister inaugurated infrastructure projects to the tune of Rs 6,697 crore and dedicated a second unit of NTPC plant worth Rs 6000 crore.

Tomorrow, he opens the Civil Aviation Research Organisation at Begumpet and launches over Rs 9000 projects in Sangareddy, where it will be followed by a public meeting.

Five people started throwing up blood and reported a burning sensation in their mouths after eating mouth freshener after their meal at a cafe in Gurugram.

Ankit Kumar was at the Laforestta Cafe in Gurugram’s Sector 90 with his wife and his friends. In a video recording inside the restaurant by Mr Kumar, his five friends, including his wife, are seen screaming and crying in pain and discomfort. One of the men then vomits on the restaurant floor while a woman puts ice in her mouth, repeatedly saying, “It’s burning.”

Mr Kumar then says, “We don’t know what they have mixed (in the mouth freshener). Everyone here is vomiting. They have cuts on their tongues. Their mouths are burning. Don’t know what type of acid they have given us.” He then asks people in the cafe to call the police.

According to reports, the victims first felt a burning sensation in their mouths and began to throw up. Soon, they were vomiting blood. Rinsing their mouths with water also didn’t help.

The five people have been hospitalised and two of them are said to be in critical condition.

The police have registered a case against the restaurant’s owner based on the victims’ complaints.