New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has unveiled fresh data regarding funding to political parties through electoral bonds. This information, submitted by political parties to the Supreme Court in sealed covers, was released by the ECI following the court’s directives.
In its statement, the ECI clarified that political parties submitted the electoral bond data as per the Supreme Court’s interim order from April 12, 2019, in WP No. 880 of 2017. The data, received and deposited with the Supreme Court without opening the sealed covers, has now been returned along with a digitized record, in accordance with the court’s March 15, 2024, order.
The ECI has now made this digitized data available on its website. However, the documents released earlier by the ECI contained only raw data such as bond dates, denominations, issuing SBI branches, and transaction dates, without disclosing the unique bond numbers.
While the Trinamool Congress has requested SBI for the unique bond numbers to comply with the Supreme Court’s directives, the BJP has not made such a request but has provided raw data. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) denied receiving any donations via electoral bonds, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) also denied such donations. In contrast, the Congress has pledged to release the raw data provided by SBI to the EC.