New Delhi:

The Election Fee at this time launched knowledge obtained from political events on electoral bonds, which it had given to the Supreme Court docket 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 Court docket has returned bodily copies together with a digitised report of the identical in a pen drive in sealed cowl. The Election Fee of India has at this time uploaded the info obtained in digitised kind from the registry of the Supreme Court docket on electoral bonds on its web site,” the EC mentioned in an announcement at this time.

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 celebration can adjust to the Supreme Court docket’s instructions. The BJP has not given any such request to SBI, however has given uncooked knowledge.

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Celebration (BSP) mentioned it hasn’t obtained any donation through electoral bonds. The Communist Celebration of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), mentioned it too did not get donations through electoral bonds.

The Congress mentioned it would launch uncooked knowledge given by SBI to the EC. The Congress’s Goa unit mentioned it obtained 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 Celebration’s West Bengal unit mentioned they haven’t obtained any donation through electoral bonds.

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

Electoral bonds have been a key methodology of political funding, permitting donors to provide anonymously via certificates bought from SBI. However final month the Supreme Court docket struck down the scheme as unconstitutional, saying it violated the best 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 full.

Greater than half of all donations obtained by political events since 2018 got here within the type of electoral bonds, in keeping with 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.