Electoral bonds worth over Rs 370 cr sold from main branch, confirms SBI

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee's repeated claims during poll meetings that black money worth crores of rupees had been spent by BJP in Bengal during the general election in Bengal, proved true again after the State Bank of India confirmed that electoral bonds worth more than Rs 370 crore had been sold from SBI's main branch in Kolkata.

Replying to an RTI filed by Vihar Durve, a Pune based social activist, the SBI authorities informed that in May it had sold electoral bonds worth Rs 822 crore between May 6 and May 24, a day after the results of Lok Sabha election were announced. Out of the total amount, bonds worth Rs 370 crore, the highest in the country, was sold from the bank's main branch.

On Tuesday, news portal The Quint had published the report, which Mohammed Salim had uploaded on his Twitter account.

The list published by The Quint shows that the highest amount of electoral bonds had been sold in Kolkata, followed by Mumbai where bonds worth Rs 200 crore had been sold during May 6 to May 20. Delhi came third, where bonds worth Rs 112 crore had been sold between May 6 and May 24.

The portal further claimed that in January, March, April and May, electoral bonds worth Rs 4,798 crore had been sold. Similarly in March, April, may, July, October and November last year, more such bonds had been sold by SBI taking the total amount to Rs 5,851 crore.

This proves that the political parties had earned a major portion of their election expenditure by selling electoral bonds, but there is no way to prove who had purchased the same.

SBI authorities said they did not have any clue as to who was paying the money to which political party. The Opposition alleged that out of the total amount of electoral bonds sold, the lion's share had gone to BJP.