New Delhi:

The Election Fee in the present day launched knowledge obtained from political events on electoral bonds, which it had given to the Supreme Courtroom in sealed covers. These particulars are believed to be for the interval earlier than April 12, 2019. Electoral bond particulars after this date was made public by the EC final week.

“… The Registry of the Supreme Courtroom has returned bodily copies together with a digitised document of the identical in a pen drive in sealed cowl. The Election Fee of India has in the present day uploaded the info obtained in digitised type from the registry of the Supreme Courtroom on electoral bonds on its web site,” the EC stated in a press release in the present day.

The EC launched the info a day after it introduced the dates for the Lok Sabha elections to be held in seven phases from April 19 to June 1.

The newest paperwork launched by the EC solely present uncooked knowledge of the date of the bonds, denominations, variety of bonds, issuing State Financial institution of India (SBI) department, date of receipt, and date of credit score. It doesn’t disclose the distinctive numbers of the bonds.

The Trinamool Congress has written to SBI asking for the distinctive numbers of the bonds in order that the get together can adjust to the Supreme Courtroom’s instructions. The BJP has not given any such request to SBI, however has given uncooked knowledge.

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Get together (BSP) stated it hasn’t received any donation by way of electoral bonds. The Communist Get together of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), stated it too did not get donations by way of electoral bonds.

The Congress stated it’ll launch uncooked knowledge given by SBI to the EC. The Congress’s Goa unit stated it received a donation of Rs 30 lakh from VM Salgaocar, an organization primarily based in Vasco da Gama.

The BJP Tripura unit and the Nationalist Congress Get together’s West Bengal unit stated they haven’t received any donation by way of electoral bonds.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), now often called Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), received Rs 230.65 crore in bonds from 2018 to 2019.

Karnataka’s Janata Dal (Secular), or JD(S), stated Embassy Group, Infosys, and Biocon are amongst their donors.

Electoral bonds have been a key technique of political funding, permitting donors to offer anonymously by certificates bought from SBI. However final month the Supreme Courtroom struck down the scheme as unconstitutional, saying it violated the fitting of voters to know who was financing events.

The BJP had obtained barely lower than 48 per cent of all election bonds cashed by events as much as March 2023. In the identical timeframe, the Congress had in contrast obtained 11 per cent of the overall.

Greater than half of all donations obtained by political events since 2018 got here within the type of electoral bonds, based on the advocacy group Affiliation for Democratic Reforms (ADR). The information launch nonetheless doesn’t map electoral bond consumers to recipients, leaving it unclear which particular person and company donors have been funding which events.