New Delhi:
The Election Commission today released data on electoral bonds received from political parties and submitted it under seal to the Supreme Court. These details are believed to be for periods prior to April 12, 2019. Details of electoral bonds after this date were published by the EC last week.
“…the Supreme Court Registry has returned the physical copies and the digitized records in a pen drive in a sealed cover.The Election Commission of India today announced that the Supreme Court “We have uploaded the data received in digitized form from the register of 'opening tribunals on electoral bonds on our website,'” the EC said in a statement today.
The EC released this data a day after announcing the schedule for the Lok Sabha elections, which will be held in seven phases from April 19 to June 1.
The latest document released by the EC shows only the raw data of bond issue date, face value, number of bonds, issuing State Bank of India (SBI) branch, date of receipt and date of credit. The bond's unique number was not disclosed.
The Trinamool Congress has written to the SBI seeking a unique number for the bonds so that the party can comply with the Supreme Court's directions. Although the BJP has not made any such request to the SBI, it has provided raw data.
Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) said it had not received any electoral bond donations. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) also said it has not received any donations through electoral bonds.
According to news agency PTI, Tamil Nadu's ruling DMK has received Rs 656.5 million through electoral bonds, including Rs 590 million from lottery magnate Santiago Martin's Future Gaming, EC data shows. There is.
Congress has announced that it will make the raw data provided by SBI to the EC public. The Goa branch of the Congress has announced that it has received a donation of Rs 3 million from Vasco da Gama-based company VM Salgaocar.
The Tripura unit of the BJP and the West Bengal unit of the Nationalist Congress party said they had not received any donations through electoral bonds.
The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), now known as the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), acquired bonds worth Rs 230.65 crore in 2018-19.
Karnataka's Janata Dal (secular), or JD(S), said Embassy Group, Infosys and Biocon were among the donors.
Electoral bonds have become an important means of political funding, and donors can donate anonymously through certificates purchased from SBI. But last month, the Supreme Court ruled the system unconstitutional, saying it violated voters' right to know who is funding their political parties.
The Bharatiya Janata Party received just under 48% of the total electoral bonds monetized by political parties till March 2023. In contrast, Congress received 11% of the total over the same period.
More than half of the donations political parties have received since 2018 have come in the form of electoral bonds, according to the advocacy group Association for Democratic Reform (ADR). Data releases still do not map purchasers and recipients of electoral bonds, and it remains unclear which individual and corporate donors were funding which political parties.