In April, before the May 10 Karnataka Assembly elections, the State Bank of India (SBI) sold electoral bonds worth Rs 970.50 crore, nearly nine times the value of electoral bonds sold just before the state’s previous polls in 2018, according to an Indian Express report.
The 26th tranche of sales under the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018, saw the sale of 1,470 electoral bonds for Rs 970.50 crore between April 3 and April 12, as per SBI’s response to an RTI filing. In April 2018, SBI sold 256 electoral bonds for Rs 114.90 crore in the second tranche of sales.
This time, the highest sales were at the SBI branch in Hyderabad, accounting for Rs 335.30 crore or 34% of the total. Kolkata came in second with Rs 197.40 crore, followed by Mumbai with Rs 169.37 crore, Chennai with Rs 122 crore and New Delhi with Rs 55.65 crore.
The SBI branch in New Delhi received over 58% of the bonds sold (Rs 565.79 crore). Under the scheme, parties must open dedicated bank accounts at designated SBI branches to receive electoral bonds. As of the latest tranche of sales, 25 parties had opened such accounts.
In contrast, in 2018, the Mumbai branch generated the most revenue (Rs 51 crore), followed by Kolkata (Rs 40 crore), Bengaluru (Rs 12.90 crore) and New Delhi (Rs 10 crore). All but Rs 6,000 of the total bonds sold were cashed in two branches – Rs 113.40 crore in New Delhi and Rs 1.50 crore in Bengaluru.
SBI had only recently begun the scheme, and the bonds were only available in 13 branches as of April 2018 but are now available in 29.
