Electoral bonds sale dips to lowest in January

Political parties that received the bonds from donors encashed Rs 42.07 crore in January, while the remaining Rs 3 lakh was transferred to the PMNRF

Electoral bonds worth just Rs 42.10 crore were sold during the latest round of bond sale in early January, the lowest since its inception, with the maximum being sold from poll-bound West Bengal, according to an RTI response.

Political parties that received the bonds from donors encashed Rs 42.07 crore in January, while the remaining Rs 3 lakh was transferred to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF).

This is the lowest (in value) electoral bonds that have been sold in the last 15 editions. Electoral bonds are sold by 29 SBI branches and eligible parties could encash only in these facilities.

The government had opened a sale window for bonds between January 1 and 10 this year.

Most of the bonds -- valued at Rs 35.75 crore -- were sold from the Kolkata branch of SBI, according to the RTI response received by transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired).

Incidentally, West Bengal will be going to Assembly polls in April-May. The Jaipur branch sold Rs 5 crore while the New Delhi branch sold Rs 1.25 crore.

The branch in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, which is also a poll-bound state, sold bonds worth Rs 10 lakh.

When it comes to encashing bonds, Kolkata branch topped the list with Rs 26 lakh, followed by Rs 9.82 crore in New Delhi and the rest in Hyderabad.

Since 2018 when the electoral bond came into being, there were 14 phases of sales during which bonds worth Rs 6,544.78 crore were sold while Rs 6,514.50 crore were encashed. The bonds which were not encashed amounting to around Rs 20.28 crore were transferred to the PMNRF.

In the 15th phase, no bonds were sold from the Mumbai branch, which has so far sold the highest value of bonds. Mumbai, which is home to several corporates, accounted for 31.16% (Rs 2,022.29 crore) of the electoral bonds that were sold, followed by Kolkata (22.98% or Rs 1491.70 crore) and Delhi (14.67% or Rs 952.62 crore).

When it came to encashing the bonds, the authorised SBI branch in New Delhi topped the list (77.31% or Rs 5,003.70 crore), followed by Hyderabad (9.31% or Rs 602.30 crore) and Bhubaneswar (4.84% or 313.50 crore).

On the other hand, the encashment in Mumbai, which sold the highest value of electoral bonds, was only 2.34% or Rs 151.13 crore.