The political landscape is intensifying as the debate over electoral bonds escalates, with opposition parties directing their criticism firmly towards the BJP. With the Lok Sabha elections looming, scheduled dates for which will be announced by the Election Commission today on March 16, 2024, the discourse is gaining momentum. Notably, the Supreme Court’s recent decision to annul electoral bonds has added fuel to the fire, sparking a flurry of accusations and counter-accusations among political factions.
What are electoral bonds?
Introduced in 2017, electoral bonds allowed individuals and corporate groups to anonymously donate unlimited amounts of money to any political party. Under the electoral bond scheme, donors purchased electoral bonds from the State Bank of India (SBI) within specified denominations and handed them over to any political party of their choice. Beneficiary political parties of the bonds were not required to disclose the donor’s identity, not even to the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Supreme Court on Electoral Bonds
A few weeks before the Lok Sabha elections, scheduled for April-May, the Supreme Court delivered a historic verdict to abolish the seven-year-old electoral funding system in mid-February. Additionally, the Supreme Court directed the State Bank of India (SBI) to provide all information regarding electoral bonds to the Election Commission.
Election Commission released the Electoral Bond data
Let us tell you that the Election Commission has complied with the time limit set by the Supreme Court and shared the information about the electoral bonds received from SBI on its website. It is noteworthy that the information revealed several notable purchasers of electoral bonds, which has sparked off a series of allegations and counter-allegations.
These parties received this much funding:
- BJP led by PM Modi: Over ₹6,000 crores
- Trinamool Congress (TMC) led by Mamata Banerjee: ₹1,610 crores
- Congress led by Sonia Gandhi: ₹1,422 crores
- Bharat Rashtriya Samithi (BRS) led by K. Chandrasekhar Rao: ₹1,215 crores
Top 20 companies buying bonds:
According to the information available on the website of the Election Commission, the top 20 contributors are:
- Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited: ₹1,368 crores
- Mehta Engineering and Infrastructure: ₹966 crores
- Quick Supply Chain Private Limited: ₹410 crores
- Haldia Energy Limited: ₹377 crores
- Vedanta Limited: ₹376 crores
- Essel Mining and Industries Limited: ₹225 crores
- Western UP Power Transmission: ₹220 crores
- Bharti Airtel Limited: ₹198 crores
- Keventer Food Park Infrastructure Limited: ₹195 crores
- M K Enterprises Limited: ₹192 crores
- Madan Lal Limited: ₹186 crores
- Yashoda Super Specialty Hospital: ₹162 crores
- Utkal Alumina International Limited: ₹145 crores
- DLF Commercial Developers Limited: ₹130 crores
- Jindal Steel and Power Limited: ₹123 crores
- BG Shirke Construction Technology Private Limited: ₹119 crores
- Dhariwal Infrastructure Limited: ₹115 crores
- Avis Trading Finance Private Limited: ₹113 crores
- Torrent Power Limited: ₹107 crores
- Birla Carbon India Private Limited: ₹105 crores
Supreme Court issued notice to State Bank of India
During the hearing on the Electoral Bonds case, the Supreme Court reprimanded the State Bank of India (SBI) and issued a notice to it, seeking a response by March 18th. The court questioned why the bank had not disclosed the bond numbers and why it had not provided the alpha-numeric numbers. The court ordered SBI to disclose the bond numbers. Additionally, the Supreme Court instructed the Registrar of the apex court to ensure that the documents are scanned and digitized. Once the process is complete, the original documents will be returned to the Election Commission of India (ECI), and the ECI will upload them on its website by March 17th or earlier.
Prashant Bhushan raised questions about the Electoral Bonds
Prashant Bhushan wrote on his social media platform, ‘On 11 April 23, Megha Engineering gives 100s Crs in Electoral Bonds to whom? But within a month it gets a 14,400 cr contract from BJP’s Mah govt! Though SBI has hidden Bond numbers from the info, some of donors & parties match can be guessed. Most donations seem a quid pro quo.