Electoral bonds worth Rs 6,492 crore sold since March 2018; SBI received Rs 3.47 crore in commission

Parties redeemed bonds worth Rs 6,472.43 crore, with the remaining going to the PM's National Relief Fund

Corporates and others bought the controversial electoral bonds worth Rs 6,492.68 crore since its first sale in March 2018, of which only around Rs 20.25 crore was not encashed by political parties.

An analysis of a series of RTIs by transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired) showed that the SBI, which is mandated with the management of electoral bonds, collected a commission of Rs 3.47 crore from 13 out of the 14 phases of sale. The commission paid on the latest tranche of sale last month is not available.

While bonds worth Rs 6,492.68 crore were bought by corporates and others, parties redeemed bonds worth Rs 6,472.43 crore. The bonds worth Rs 20.25 crore, which were not redeemed by parties, were transferred to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund as per the rules.

Opposition parties, activists and private poll watchdogs have raised questions about the electoral bond scheme, introduced by former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in 2018, over lack of transparency. Parties do not need to disclose the source of bonds they encash and the opponents allege that it was an opaque way of political funding that helped the ruling BJP.

An analysis of electoral bond donations in 2018-19 by transparency activist Venkatesh Nayak showed that BJP bagged most of the donations from electoral bonds at Rs 1,450.89 crore, followed by Congress (Rs 383.26 crore). Almost two-thirds of the total donations received by seven prominent parties were from electoral bonds.

In 2019 before the Lok Sabha elections, there were four tranches of electoral bond sale during which bonds worth Rs 4,794.80 crore, accounting for 73.84% of the total sale in 14 phases so far. Of this, Rs 4,785.62 crore were encashed by parties.

While the bond scheme came into effect in January 2018, the first edition of sale was in March that year when electoral bonds worth Rs 222 crore were sold while bonds worth Rs 221 crore were redeemed.

The highest sale was the ninth edition between April 1 and 20 last year before the Lok Sabha elections when bonds worth Rs 2,256.37 crore were sold. Except for Rs 5.05 crore, the whole bonds were cashed by parties.

Before the General Elections in 2019, the bond sale was held between January 1 and 10, March 1 and 15 and May 4 and 10 besides the April event. The March edition saw a sale of Rs 1,365.69 crore of which bonds worth Rs 1,364.69 crore were encashed.

The lowest quantum of sale was between January 13 and 22 this year when bonds worth Rs 81.67 crore were sold and the whole were encashed.

The latest phase of bond sale was just before the Bihar elections last month -- between October 19 and 28 -- when corporates bought bonds worth Rs 282.29 crore out of which all but Rs 1,000 worth bonds were redeemed.

While the rules permit only registered unrecognised parties with a vote share of more than 1% in the previous Lok Sabha or Assembly polls, DH reported on Monday, that a number of unrecognised parties without 1% share had managed to redeem electoral bonds, indicating laxity in the monitoring mechanism.