Electoral bonds worth Rs 648.48 cr sold within weeks of elections to 5 states

Electoral bonds worth Rs 648.48 crore were sold and whole redeemed by parties during the latest round of bond sales earlier this month, within weeks of elections to five states.

Since 2018 when the electoral bond came into being, there were 20 phases of sales, including the latest, during which bonds worth Rs 9,856.71 crore have been sold while Rs 9,836.13 crore were encashed. The bonds which were not encashed were Rs 20.68 crore and were transferred to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund.

According to the RTI response provided by the SBI to transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired) on Saturday, the highest sale was in the Hyderabad branch of the SBI where bonds worth Rs 425.98 crore were sold between April 1 and 10.

Chennai's main branch came second with Rs 100 crore sale followed by the Mumbai branch where the bond sale was Rs 43 crore. There were sales of bonds in SBI branches in New Delhi (Rs 40 crore), Kolkata (Rs 39 crore), and Panaji (Rs 50 lakh).

When it comes to redeeming the bonds, the highest was in the Hyderabad branch where bonds worth Rs 420.98 crore were redeemed followed by New Delhi (Rs 106.50 crore), Kolkata (Rs 18 crore), and Bhubaneswar (Rs 3 crore).

In the 19th edition of bond sale between January 1 and 10, ahead of the Assembly polls 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 2021, bonds worth Rs 614.33 crore were sold and the whole was redeemed. In July when the 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, TMC, and NCP — and 14 regional parties together garnered Rs 3,441.31 crore through electoral bonds.

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

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