ECI Publishes List of Electoral Bonds minus Co-Relation between Donors and Parties
NEW DELHI, Mar 14: The Election Commission of India has uploaded the data of the electoral bonds given to it by the State Bank of India. The details have been uploaded on Thursday, a day before the deadline set by the Supreme Court.
The SBI on Tuesday evening submitted the details of entities which purchased the now-scrapped electoral bonds and political parties which redeemed them. The Supreme Court gave the Election Commission time till 5pm on March 15 to publish these data on its site.
Considered a big move towards transparency in political funding, the data pertains to purchases of bonds of three denomination – ₹ 1 lakh, ₹ 10 lakh and ₹ 1 crore – dating back to April 12, 2019 and reveals purchases by companies as well as individuals.
The EC’s website has two lists. The first is of companies that purchased electoral bonds, along with the denomination and dates. The other has names of the political parties as well as the denominations of the bonds and the dates on which they were encashed. There is, however, no way of correlating the lists and finding out which company had donated to which party.
During a hearing on March 11, a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud had come down heavily on the SBI for “wilful disobedience of its order” on the data being handed over to the poll body by March 6.
The Supreme Court had on February 15 scrapped the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordered disclosure by the EC of donors, the amount donated by them and recipients.
The SBI had sought time till June 30 for disclosure of the details. Its plea, however, was rejected by the apex court, and it asked the bank to submit all details to the Election Commission by the close of working hours on Tuesday.
“It may be recalled that in the said matter ECI has consistently and categorically weighed in favour of disclosure and transparency, a position reflected in the proceedings of the Hon’ble Supreme Court and noted in the order also,” ECI said as it published the data on the site.
The first part of the details contains 337 pages detailing the entities that bought electoral bonds and the date of purchase. The second part containing 426 pages provided the details of the political parties, dates and the amount. It cannot be known which company bought whose electoral bonds. The bonds numbers have not been provided.
Donors to political parties through electoral bonds included Grasim Industries, Megha Engineering, Torrent Power, Bharti Airtel, DLF Commercial Developers, and Vedanta Ltd. Apollo Tyres, Lakshmi Mittal, Edelweiss, PVR, Keventer, Sula Wine, Welspun and Sun Pharma were among buyers of electoral bonds.
Recipients of funds through electoral bonds include BJP, Congress, AIADMK, BRS, Shiv Sena, TDP, YSR Congress, DMK, JDS, NCP, Trinamool Congress, JDU, RJD, AAP, SP.
Electoral bond was a mode for Indian political parties to receive funding/donations. The scheme was introduced in 2017-18. In February 2024, the scheme was struck down by the Supreme Court. The State Bank of India issued electoral bonds worth ₹16,518 crore in 30 tranches since the inception of the scheme in 2018 till it was scrapped last month.
(Manas Dasgupta)
