New Delhi:

In a major move towards transparency in political funding, the Election Commission of India has uploaded data on electoral bonds provided to it by the State Bank of India. The details were uploaded on Thursday, a day before the deadline set by the Supreme Court.

The data covers purchases of bonds in three denominations (Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore) since April 12, 2019, and sheds light on the purchases by companies and individuals.

The EC’s website has two listings. The first is the company that purchased the electoral bond, along with the denomination and date. The other has the name of the political party as well as the denomination and redemption date of the bond. However, there is no way to correlate these lists and find out which company or individual donated to which party.

The company that contributed the most in this way was Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR, which purchased bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore. Megha Engineering And Infrastructures Limited came second, buying bonds worth Rs 966 crore.

Qwik Supply Chain Private Limited ranked third with Rs 410 crore, followed by Vedanta Limited (Rs 400 crore) and Haldia Energy Limited (Rs 377 crore).

Bharti Group ranked sixth with a donation of Rs 247 crore, followed by Essel Mining And Inds Ltd with a donation of Rs 224 crore. The remaining three in the list of top 10 donors are Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited (contribution of Rs 220 crore), Keventer Foodpark Infra Ltd (contribution of Rs 195 crore) and Madanlal Ltd (contribution of Rs 185 crore).

The pollster announced in a statement that it had released the data, saying “The Election Commission of India has today uploaded the electoral bonds data received from the SBI on its website ‘as is’”.

“It may be recalled that the ECI has consistently and unequivocally supported disclosure and transparency on the above issues and this position was reflected in the proceedings before the Supreme Court and also noted in the order,” it said.

Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer appearing for the Association for Democratic Reforms, one of the petitioners in the electoral bonds case, pointed out that the serial number of the bonds was not mentioned in the data. He said this was necessary to figure out who was donating to which party and how much. He also claimed that non-anonymous donations were implicit in the Supreme Court order.

“The #ElectoralBonds information uploaded by the EC (which they say was recorded by SBI) does not give the serial number of the bonds which is necessary to find who provided the bonds to whom. This is implicit in the SBI affidavit of SC Jt. . said the information though was recorded in different silos,” Mr. Bhushan posted on X.

Information #electoralbonds What the EC uploaded (which they said was recorded by SBI) did not give the serial number of the bonds, which is necessary to find out who provided the bonds to whom. This is implicit in SC Jt. The information was recorded in separate silos, the SBI affidavit said. pic.twitter.com/WTcq0pmDvR

— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) March 14, 2024

data can be accessed here.

Supreme Court’s warning

During Monday’s hearing, a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud came down heavily on the SBI for “deliberately violating its orders” in submitting data to the poll body before March 6.

The court has ordered the SBI to submit the data to the Election Commission by Tuesday, warning it will face contempt proceedings if it fails to do so. The court also directed the bank’s chairman and managing director to file an affidavit if the order is complied with.

SBI, India’s largest bank, submitted the data on Tuesday and submitted an affidavit to the court the next day. The affidavit said 22,217 electoral bonds were issued between April 2019 and February 15, 2024, before the Supreme Court struck down the scheme by declaring it unconstitutional and arbitrary.

The bank said 22,030 bonds had been redeemed by political parties and the remaining 187 bonds had been redeemed in accordance with regulations and the funds were deposited into the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund.