23rd Tranche: Rs 676-cr Worth Electoral Bonds Sold In A week In November

Electoral bonds of Rs 676.2 crore were reportedly sold between November 9 and November 15 while the campaigning for the Gujarat Assembly polls was going on in full swing, the State Bank of India (SBI) in its reply to a Right To Information said.

In order to respond to the Bihar-based RTI activist Kanhaiya Kumar's application, the SBI informed that maximum number of the buyers flocked to the Mumbai branch of the bank, the branch sold Rs 309.4 crore worth of electoral bonds, followed by the Delhi branch which had a sale of Rs 225.4 crore, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar , Kolkata , Bengaluru , and Chandigarh branches also followed.

The State Bank of India also stated that out of the 954 bonds of various denominations that were sold in the 23rd tranche from November 9 to November 15, all but one bond of worth Rs 1,000 was en-cashed. It further claimed that most of the bonds were en-cashed at SBI's branch in New Delhi, where national parties have their base. The only other branch where electoral bonds worth Rs 16 crore were en-cashed was the Hyderabad branch.

As per reports, this was the first tranche of electoral bonds since the Union Finance Ministry on November 7, 2022 made amends in the Electoral Bond Scheme-2018 in order to allow an extra 15 days of sales in a year with an Assembly election. Till this change was made, electoral bonds were sold by SBI through four 10-day apans in January, April, July and October, and an additional 30 days in the year of a Lok Sabha polls.

The 24th tranche of electoral bonds was declared by the government last week and are being sold from December 5 to December 12. The scheme started in March 2018, after being stated in the Budget 2017-18 by then-Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with an endeavuor of increasing transparency of political funding.