22030 electoral bonds redeemed by political parties; SBI submits affidavit to SC

NEW DELHI: Amidst the raging controversy, SBI on Wednesday submitted an affidavit regarding electoral bonds in the Supreme Court. SBI also informed the court about submitting data on electoral bonds to the election commission. The data is contained in two PDF files which are protected by passwords.

Between April 2019 and February 15, 2024, 22,217 electoral bonds were issued. Of this, political parties converted 22,030 bonds into cash. The remaining 187 have been redeemed and the money deposited in the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund, the bank said.

Between April 1 and 11, 2019, 3346 bonds were purchased. According to the affidavit, 1609 bonds were cashed by political parties. The affidavit also explained that between April 12, 2019 and April 15, 2024, 20,421 bonds were purchased while 18,871 bonds were encashed by political parties.

The affidavit also mentioned informing the Election Commission in clear terms about details on which political party has cashed how many bonds and in what manner. The Supreme Court has directed all this information to be made public on the Election Commission website by Friday evening.

In a landmark judgment on February 15, the Supreme Court had declared the electoral bond scheme unconstitutional.