New Delhi: A day after the State Bank of India (SBI) deposited all the details of electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India (ECI), it filed a compliance affidavit in the Supreme Court on Thursday, March 14. The bank revealed that those electoral bonds which were not encashed by the political parties were transferred to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) in accordance with a gazette notification.
“The amount of electoral bonds which were not encashed by the political party within the validity period of fifteen days during this period have been transferred to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund as per the Gazette Notification no 20 dated 02.01.2018,” the SBI mentioned in the affidavit submitted in the court. The affidavit revealed that a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were bought between April 1, 2019 to February 15, 2024, out of which 22,030 were redeemed.
Notably, the PMNRF website points out that “PMNRF accepts only voluntary donations by individuals and institutions.”
Also read: SBI’s Deadline for Electoral Bonds Details Ends Today. Here’s Who Received the Most
Filing the affidavit, SBI chairperson Dinesh Kumar Khara said that it had complied with all the directives of the Supreme Court and shared the date of purchase of electoral bonds, the name of the buyer, the denomination of the electoral bond purchased, and details of the political parties which received donations through the bonds. All these four were a secret as per the provisions of the electoral bonds scheme initiated by the Narendra Modi government, until the Supreme Court ruled the scheme as “unconstitutional” this February and asked the SBI to furnish all details.
Thereafter, the Supreme Court also struck down the SBI’s appeal to seek more time to share all the details, and ordered it to furnish all the details to the ECI by March 12, 2024.
Complying with the order, the SBI on March 11, 2024 submitted two password protected PDF files in a pen drive containing all the details to the ECI. It also shared a separate envelope containing the passwords with the ECI. The apex election body is supposed to publish all these details on March 15, 2024.
The SBI’s affidavit shows that 3,346 electoral bonds were purchased between April 1, 2019 to April 11, 2019 when the bonds were first issued. Only 1609 bonds were redeemed out of 3,346. Then, between April 12, 2019 to February 15, 2024, 18, 871 electoral bonds were purchased. In this period, 20,421 electoral bonds were redeemed.