EC releases data on electoral bonds including bond numbers
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New Delhi: On the directions of the Supreme Court, the State Bank of India provided the Election Commission of India with all of the electoral bond data, which it published on Thursday. This data contains bond numbers that would allow political parties to match donors with their contributions.
“The EC has uploaded the data on electoral bonds on its website as received from SBI on ‘as is where is basis’,” it said in a statement.
In accordance with the rulings of the highest court, the two sets of data—552 pages detailing political party redemptions and 386 pages detailing donors—refer to electoral bonds purchased and redeemed between April 2019 and January 2024.
On February 15, the Supreme Court declared that the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018 was unconstitutional due to its violation of the right to information. Donors were able to stay anonymous thanks to the scheme. The court has ordered SBI to submit all donor and party details by Thursday at 5 p.m.
The SBI had declared in an affidavit that it had filed with the court earlier in the day, “The SBI is now revealing information (along with that already disclosed) which will show: a) The name of the purchaser of the bond; b) The denomination and specific number of the bond; c) The name of the party that has encashed the bond; d) Last four digits of the bank account number of political parties; e) The denomination and number of the bond encashed.”