The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday, March 21, made public a fresh data set of electoral bonds, including the unique identification numbers or the alpha-numeric numbers that can help match their purchasers with the political parties that received the funds.
Two separate lists of the donors and the recipients were published by the poll panel on its website after the details were submitted to it by the State Bank of India earlier in the day as per a Supreme Court order.
The ECI said on X, “In compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions, SBI has provided data pertaining to electoral bonds to ECI today i.e. March 21, 2024. ECI has uploaded it on its website as received from SBI on an ‘as is where is basis’.”
Click here to find out the new data on electoral bonds.
Earlier, in the day, in a compliance affidavit filed ahead of the 5 p.m. deadline set by the apex court, the SBI chairman said the complete bank account numbers and KYC details of the political parties which redeemed the bonds have not been made public as it may compromise the security of these accounts.
The SBI however mentioned the KYC details of purchasers have also not been made public for security reasons. It said complete bank account numbers and KYC details were not necessary for “identifying the political parties”.
The Supreme Court, in its March 15th judgement, declared the electoral bonds as unconstitutional and ordered SBI to submit all details relating to it to the election body.
On March 17, the election commission made public fresh data on electoral bonds, which it had submitted in sealed covers to the Supreme Court and was later asked to put it in public domain. These details are believed to be pertaining to the period before April 12, 2019. Electoral bond details after this date were made public by the poll panel last week.
An electoral bond allowed individuals, corporations or organisations to contribute or donate money to any political party anonymously by purchasing bonds from the SBI. It was introduced in 2017 under the Narendra Modi government. The expiry date of these bonds is 15 days, after which it will automatically be transferred to the Prime Minister Relief Fund.
The SBI was the only bank authorised to sell and redeem the bonds, which were first issued in March 2018 and were being sold until the scheme was declared null and void by the top court last month.
(With PTI inputs)
