The process concludes the time-bound instructions of the Supreme Court, which on 14 February struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme.
These directives originated from the Election Commission of India (ECI) on 1 February. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Election Commission of India (ECI) made the electoral bonds data public, uploading it on its website on the evening of Thursday, 14 March (https://www.eci.gov.in/disclosure-of-electoral-bonds).
In the current form, the two sets of data uploaded do not reveal who has donated how much to which party.
It received the data from the State Bank of India on 12 March as the Supreme Court directed the latter.
The ECI had time till Thursday evening to upload the data.
The data titled “Details of electoral bonds submitted by SBI” is divided into two parts.
The first part is 337 pages long and contains the “purchaser details” and the date and denominations. The denominations are ₹1 lakh, ₹10 lakh and ₹1 crore. It is dated between 12 April 2019 and 11 January 2024.
The buyers of electoral bonds include Lakshmi Mittal, Edelweiss, PVR, Keventer, Sula Wine, Grasim Industries, Megha Engineering, Piramal Enterprises, Torrent Power, Bharti Airtel, DLF Commercial Developers, Vedanta Ltd., Apollo Tyres, Welspun, and Sun Pharma.
The Info of #ElectoralBonds uploaded by EC (which they say is as recd from SBI), does not give the serial number of the bonds, which is necessary for finding who gave bond to whom. This was implicit in SC Jt. SBI affidavit said this info is recorded though in separate silos. pic.twitter.com/WTcq0pmDvR
— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) March 14, 2024
The second part is 426 pages long and contains the names of “political parties” that received the bonds. It also gives details of denominations and dates for all transactions. This part is dated between 12 April 2019 and 24 January 2024.
According to the data, the parties that received and redeemed electoral bonds include the BJP, Congress, AIADMK, BRS, Shiv Sena, TDP, YSR Congress Party, DMK, JDS, NCP, Trinamool Congress, JDU, RJD, AAP, and the Samajwadi Party.
The process concludes the time-bound instructions of the Supreme Court, which on 14 February struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme, calling the anonymous political funding method “unconstitutional”.
The SBI told the Court that matching the data of part one with part two would be time-consuming. This “matching” data will reveal which political party received how much from which electoral bond purchaser, who could be an individual, a group, or an institution or company.
Among the top-most donors are Future Gaming And Hotel Services (Lottery Martin) with an amount of ₹1,368 crore and Megha Engineering And Infrastructure Ltd with ₹980 crore.
The total amount received by all political parties between 2019 and 2024 is ₹1,27,69,08,93,000.00. Of this, the BJP alone received ₹ 60,60,51,11,000.00. That comes to 47.46%, just under half the total amount.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge alleged in a post on X that “a fresh investigation shows 15 more companies donated to BJP after ED, CBI, IT raids, making it a total of 45 companies paying BJP nearly ₹400 crore. According to reports, four shell companies also funded BJP.”
He posted that “if BJP is bothered about ‘Mother of Democracy’, then it should bring a white paper on its own finances, through an independent investigation.”
Advocate Prashant Bhushan referred to the lack “matching” of the data. In a post on X, he pointed out: “The Info of #ElectoralBonds uploaded by EC (which they say is as received from SBI), does not give the serial number of the bonds, which is necessary for finding who gave bond to whom. This was implicit in SC Judgment. SBI affidavit said this info is recorded though in separate silos.”
Bhushan made a charge of a quid pro quo in the bonds issue. He posted on X: “On 11 April 2023, Megha Engineering gives 100s Crores in #ElectoralBonds to whom? But within a month, it gets a 14,400 cr contract from BJP’s Mah (Maharashtra) govt! Though SBI has hidden Bond numbers from the info, some of donors and parties match can be guessed. Most donations seem a quid pro quo.”
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