Electoral bonds worth Rs 389.50 crore sold in latest edition of sale

New Electoral bonds worth Rs 389.50 crore were sold during the latest edition of the sale of the financial instrument earlier this month.

The total number of bonds sold were 480. Of this, 475 bonds were redeemed while five bonds worth Rs 5,000 have not been redeemed.

Since 2018 when the electoral bond came into being, there were 21 phases of sales, including the latest, during which bonds worth Rs 10,246.22 crore have been sold while Rs 10225.63 crore were encashed. The bonds which were not encashed was Rs 20.59 crore and were transferred to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.

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According to the RTI response provided by the SBI to transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired) on Friday, the highest sale was in the New Delhi branch of the SBI where bonds worth Rs 140.10 crore were sold.

Kolkata Main branch came second with Rs 116.50 crore sale followed by Hyderabad Branch where the bond sale was Rs 108.50 crore. There were sales of bonds in SBI branches in Mumbai (Rs 22 crore), Bhubaneswar (Rs 2 crore) and Jaipur (Rs 40 lakh).

When it comes to redeeming the bonds, the highest was in the Bhubaneswar branch where bonds worth Rs107 crore were redeemed followed by Chennai (Rs 75 crore) and Hyderabad (Rs 71 crore), New Delhi (Rs 70 crore) and Kolkata (Rs 66.50 crore).

According to the RTI, the SBI has raised a commission bill of Rs 25.44 lakh excluding GST. It said it is yet to get Rs 42.30 crore for the 20th phase of bond sale. The SBI has asked the Ministry of Finance to arrange the release of the total pending commission of Rs 67.74 crore along with GST.

In the 20th edition of bond sale between April 1 and 10, electoral bonds worth Rs 648.48 crore were sold and whole redeemed by parties. In the 19th edition of bond sale between January 1 and 10, ahead of the Assembly elections to five states -- Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Punjab -- electoral bonds worth Rs 1,213.26 crore were sold and whole redeemed by parties except for bonds worth Rs 40 lakh.

In the previous 18th phase in October last year, bonds worth Rs 614.33 crore were sold and the whole redeemed. In July when 17th phase of bond sale took place, Rs 150.51 crore were sold and the whole redeemed. In April, bonds worth Rs 695.34 crore were sold and only two bonds worth Rs 1,000 each were not redeemed.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) reported that in 2019-20, four national parties -- BJP, Congress, Trinamool Congress and NCP -- and 14 regional parties together garnered Rs 3,441.31 crore through electoral bonds.

According to ADR, 62.92 per cent (Rs 2993.82 crore) of the total income of the four national parties came from donations through electoral bonds. Ruling BJP's income rose by 50.34 per cent to Rs 3,623.28 crore in 2019-20 with the bulk coming from redemption of electoral bonds while three other national parties CPI(M), CPI and BSP did not receive any donation through electoral bonds.