Election Commission Publishes Electoral Bonds Data on Website
Election Commission Publishes Electoral Bonds Data on Website
By RMN News Service
The electoral bonds data that the State Bank of India (SBI) willy-nilly provided to the Election Commission of India (ECI) is now available online. The ECI published the data on the web a day before the deadline of March 15 set by the Supreme Court.
In a communique issued today (March 14), ECI said that in compliance of Supreme Court’s directions, contained in its order dated Feb 15 and March 11, 2024 (in the matter of WPC NO.880 of 2017), the SBI had provided the data pertaining to the electoral bonds to the ECI on March 12, 2024.
It added that ECI has uploaded the data on electoral bonds on its website as received from SBI on “as is where is basis”. The data provided in two lists covers the period starting from April 2019.
The first list reveals the names of companies that purchased electoral bonds, along with the denomination and dates. The other list has names of the political parties as well as the denominations of the bonds and the dates on which they were encashed. However, it is difficult to find from these lists which party received the money from which company. The Supreme Court on March 11 had directed SBI to provide data about donors and recipients of electoral bonds by March 12.
Electoral bonds are among the instruments of bribe that big corporates use to secretly fund political parties in quid pro quo deals. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of prime minister (PM) Narendra Modi is the largest beneficiary of this clandestine corruption fund.
