Days ahead of the Lok Sabha Polls 2024, electoral bonds have been nothing short of a Pandora's Box for India's ruling political party BJP. After repeated reprimands by the Supreme Court of India, the SBI finally made the data available on March 11 but without the unique alphanumeric numbers. The missing numbers and names of donors has not been the only anomaly flagged by the opposition leaders, political influencers and those on social media. A quick analysis of the data points that each year, starting from the year 2019 up till 2024, BJP received a lion's share of the donations overall.
Donations received, year-wise
Till the information linking the donors and the political parties is made available, a quick look at the statistics and figures reveals that in the electoral bonds, the ruling BJP had an edge in ways more than one and received a staggering majority of the donations each year.
Starting with the fiscal year 2019-20, the BJP secured the highest percentage of donations through the electoral bond scheme. BJP's share amounts to a whopping 20,24,75,01,000 rupees from various donors. A detailed statistical analysis by The Probe also points out that this sum represents nearly 82.081 percent of the total money received (making it the highest among all political parties) through the bond scheme. Coming a distant second is the Congress party, which received an amount totalling 1,76,31,10,000 rupees from donors in the same year. Notably, only 19 political parties received funding through electoral bonds in the same period.
Fiscal year (2020-2021)
Moving on, in the year 2020-2021, parties other than the BJP, such as the YSRCP emerged as the highest recipients of funds through electoral bonds. YSRCP received a substantial amount totaling 95,25,00,000 rupees making it the party to receive most funds. Coming a close second was DMK, which received donations to the tune of 80,00,00,000 rupees, while the BJD received 67,00,00,000 rupees. The TMC received donations to the tune of 43,40,00,000 rupees, while the BJP received 23,38,50,000 rupees.
Fiscal year (2021-2022)
Moving on to the financial year 2021-2022 and the BJP received 39% of all the money received by political parties through electoral bonds. It received donations totalling 10,33,70,00,000 rupees, while the TMC came a distant second by receiving funds totalling 5,29,14,30,000 rupees in the same period. The DMK secured third position and received a total of 3,05,00,00,000 rupees.
Fiscal year (2022-2023)
This year, the BJP came back to the top position and received a lion's share of funds through electoral bonds. The ruling political outfit secured an amount of 12,94,14,99,000 rupees, representing nearly 46% of the total donations through electoral bonds among all political outfits. In the same year, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) formerly called Telangana Rashtra Samithi received the second highest amount of donations at 5,29,03,70,000 rupees, while TMC became the third largest party and received 3,25,10,00,000 rupees in funds.
Fiscal year (2023-2024)
Moving onto the last year of electoral bonds funding, and in 2023-24, the BJP once again emerged as the leading recipient of electoral bonds funds, amassing a total of 16,85,52,61,000 rupees, while the Congress came second and received a total of 8,28,36,00,000 rupees in donations. The TMC came third at 6,12,42,38,000 rupees, while the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) came fourth and received 4,95,52,00,000 rupees.
Details shared, so far
On Saturday, stepping up its attack on the government over the electoral bonds issue, the Congress alleged that BJP has already extorted "thousands of crores" from corporate India and there was a need for an independent Supreme Court-monitored probe. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh further alleged that BJP used four corrupt tactics and held corporate India to ransom, namely, through bribery, extortion and money laundering through shell companies.
Next hearing on the matter
So far, the SBI has shared two sets of documents with the Election Commission of India. While the first set of data contained details regarding the date of purchase of the bonds, name of the purchaser, denomination of the bond purchased; the second set furnished details about the date of encashment of the bonds of various denominations by the political parties. However, the information about the keys linking the two was conspicuously missing. As a result, the details regarding who gave money to which political outfit were absolutely missing. The SC has asked the SBI regarding this non disclosure and sought an explanation on the matter in the next hearing on the case on March 18.
