Electoral bonds: Encashment spikes in poll months for several parties

Most political parties encashed hundreds of crores of rupees of electoral bonds during elections, according to data provided by the State Bank of India (SBI) to the Election Commission of India.

Speaking at the News18 Rising Bharat Summit on March 20, Home Minister Amit Shah said that in 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had received a sizeable proportion of funds through electoral bonds after the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) had kicked in.

According to the data, encashment of electoral bonds by BJP in April-May 2019 amounted to nearly 88 percent of that for the entirety of 2019-20.  The figure was at 96 percent for Congress.

In 2019-20, the BJP encashed electoral bonds worth Rs 2,025 crore, while the Congress got only Rs 176 crore in comparison.

The next big spike in encashment of electoral bonds for the two national parties was in January 2022 in the run-up to assembly elections in Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur, and Uttar Pradesh — all held in February-March 2022.

Also Read: BJP top electoral bond receiver at Rs 6,061 crore, TMC 2nd

Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls — before the Supreme Court struck down the electoral bond scheme as unconstitutional — the BJP collected more than the Congress when it came to funding, with the Grand Old Party collecting Rs 617 crore, less than half the ruling party's Rs 1,264 crore.

The same seemingly occurred for Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Even as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu assembly elections were held in March-April 2021, the TMC encashed Rs 55.44 worth of bonds in April 2021 and DMK a huge Rs 106 crore. Both these figures were their highest monthly encashment until then and remain so for the DMK.

In the previous five months — November 2020 to March 2021 — put together, the DMK had not encashed a single bond, while the TMC had got Rs 27 crore worth of them.

In addition to the Lok Sabha, several states will also go to polls in the next few months, including Andhra Pradesh. And as the above graphic shows, the two regional rivals are gearing up financially.

While the YSR Congress Party mopped up Rs 61 crore in November 2023-January 2024 via the bonds, Telugu Desam Party was far ahead with Rs 128 crore over the same three-month period, including a party record Rs 118 crore in the first month of 2024.

A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court, on February 15, unanimously scrapped the electoral bond scheme.

Also going to polls in May-June is Odisha. However, the ruling Biju Janata Dal did not encash a single electoral bond from December 2023 to January 2024. However, it did get Rs 231 crore through them in July-November 2023.

The situation is similar for the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, which lost power in the recently concluded Telangana assembly elections: Rs 404 crore was raised via bonds in July-November 2023 but nothing in the subsequent two months. But nothing compares to April 2022, when the party encashed, quite stunningly, Rs 411 crore of bonds – a third of all its bond donations since April 2019. This was a few months before it transformed from Telangana Rashtra Samithi to BRS.

Then there is the curious case of the Aam Aadmi Party, which encashed electoral bonds worth just Rs 2.5 crore in the 10 months before the February 2020 Delhi assembly elections. In fact, from April 2019 to September 2022, AAP encashed bonds worth a mere Rs 10.75 crore. However, in the last three months of 2022, it encashed Rs 44.55 crore worth of these bonds.

Assembly elections took place in Himachal Pradesh in November 2022 and Gujarat the next month.

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