The Election Commission of India on Thursday released the data of Electoral Bonds bought by various entities from the State Bank of India and the recipients of such bonds The development comes after the SBI submitted the data to the Election Commission on 12th March. The bank had submitted the data after the Supreme Court rejected its plea to extend more time.
ECI has published the elector bond data in sheets. One gives the detail of purchasers of the Electoral Bonds from 12 April 2019 to 11 January 2024, and the other gives the detail of political parties that encashed Electoral Bonds from 12 April 2019 to 24 January 2024.
However, as the Electoral Bond Scheme was meant to be anonymous, the data published by ECI does not show who donated to which party. However, with careful study of body the sheet, it will be possible to make a rough estimate of the same.
Interestingly, as per the data, a total of 18,871 electoral bonds were purchased, but 20,421 bonds were encased by the parties. The total in the purchase sheet is ₹1,21,55,51,32,000.00, while the total in the recipient sheet is ₹1,27,69,08,93,000.00. The reason for this discrepancy is not clear.
At the first glance, it appears that Adani Group didn’t purchase any Electoral Bond. The name Reliance also does not appear in the list. Similarly, Serum Institute, Essar Group and GMR Group, alleged to have donate to BJP through, Prudent Electoral Trust, also do not appear in the list, and Prudent Electoral Trust is also not listed.
On March 11th, the Supreme Court dismissed SBI’s plea seeking an extension to disclose details of each electoral bond encashed by political parties before the scheme was scrapped last month.
The apex court noted that the SBI doesn’t need to complete the matching exercise linking donors with the political parties but rather simply reveal the data of how much different political parties received in donations and who donated through electoral bonds.
The court directed SBI to disclose the details by the close of business hours on March 12. It further instructed the ECI to compile the information and publish the details on its official website no later than March 15, 2024, by 5 PM.