Political parties redeemed electoral bonds worth Rs 6,108 crore in 8 months: ADR

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 21 

Stating that electoral bonds infringe the citizens’ fundamental ‘Right to Know’ by withholding crucial information regarding electoral funding, NGO Association for Democratic Reforms has called for scrapping Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018.

According to ADR, political parties redeemed 12,173 electoral bonds worth Rs 6,108.47 crore between March 2018 and October 2019.

A total of 12,313 bonds worth Rs 6,128.72 crore were sold since the inception of the scheme.

“Such opaqueness is at the cost of larger public interest and is a severe blow to the very fundamentals of transparency and accountability,” ADR added.

NGO calls for scrapping electoral bonds scheme as it infringes ‘right to know’

Releasing an analysis of electoral bonds sold and redeemed during 12 phases between March 2018 and October 2019, ADR said, “In the case of continuance of the scheme, the principle of anonymity of the bond donor must be done away with. All political parties which receive donations through Electoral Bonds should declare in their contributions reports the total amount of such donations received in the given financial year, along with the detailed particulars of the donors as against each bond; the amount of each such bond and the full particulars of the credit received against each bond. The procedures and reporting framework for the above must be standardised to ensure that a true picture of the financial position of the political parties is revealed to the general public.”

The ECI/CBDT/CAG or any other relevant institution should be entrusted with the responsibility to oversee that there is no discrepancy between the value of Electoral Bonds redeemed and the value of donations received through Electoral Bonds by the political parties, it said.

The ADR report analysed the total number and value of electoral bonds purchased and redeemed by the political parties, branch-wise and denomination-wise, in the 12 phases from March 2018 to October 2019. 

As mentioned in the scheme, it is likely that 140 bonds amounting to a total of Rs 20.25 crore were deposited in the PMRF. Thus, 99.67 per cent of the bonds purchased during the 12 phases were encashed by the political parties within the validity period, states the report.

Nearly 59 per cent of the total value of electoral bonds were purchased in two months alone – March 2019 and April 2019 during the period of general elections.

Highest amount of bonds, 4,681 bonds worth Rs 2,256.37 crore were purchased in April 2019, followed by 2,742 bonds worth Rs 1,365.69 crore purchased in March and 1,187 bonds worth Rs 822.26 crore were sold in May last year.

Nearly 8 per cent (Rs 487.70 crore) and 91.76% (Rs 5,624 crore) of the total number of bonds purchased during the 12 phases were in the denomination of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 1 crore, respectively.

Mumbai witnessed the maximum (by value) sale of 2,899 bonds worth Rs 1,879.96 crore, followed by 3,478 bonds worth Rs 1,440.337 crore in Kolkata and 1,630 bonds worth Rs 918.58 crore in New Delhi. 

A total of 8,903 Electoral Bonds worth Rs 4,917.5 crore or 80.5% of the total Electoral Bonds redeemed between March 2018 and October 2019 were encashed in New Delhi (while maximum value of bonds were purchased in Mumbai) where national parties’ headquarters are located.

Between March 2018 and October 2019, a total of 140 bonds worth Rs 20.25 crore of the total value of bonds purchased were not redeemed by the payee political parties before the expiry of the 15 days period, it added.