The Election Commission of India has uploaded electoral bonds data with unique alphanumeric code on its website. Earlier in the day, the State Bank of India submitted all the details on electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India and informed the Supreme Court.
“In compliance of Hon’ble Supreme Court's directions, SBI has provided data pertaining to electoral bonds to ECI today ie March 21, 2024,” the Election Commission said in a post on X.
“ECI has uploaded it on its website as received from SBI on “as is where is basis”,” the poll panel said as it shared a link to its website where two PDFs containing all data received from the bank have been uploaded.
The data included the all-important serial numbers for the bonds. The alphanumeric and serial numbers of electoral bonds can be used to match donations made using the financial instruments to the political parties that received them.
The details of redemption by political parties include serial number, date of encashment, name of the political party, last four digits of the account number, prefix, bond number, denomination, pay branch code and pay teller.
It is to be noted that without the unique alphanumeric code, there is no way of linking the lists and finding out which donor had given money to which party. The alphanumeric code can only be seen using ultraviolet (UV) light.
On Monday, the Supreme Court had directed SBI to disclose all electoral bond details, including the unique identification code, by March 21. It had then asked the Election Commission to upload the details once it got them from the SBI.
The SBI chairman, in an affidavit to the Supreme Court, submitted that the “prefix and the bond number is infact the alphanumeric number”.
The chairman said that the complete bank account numbers and KYC details of the political parties are not being made public as it may compromise the security of the account. Similarly, KYC details of the purchasers are also not made public. However, they are not necessary for identifying the political parties.
In its affidavit, the bank stated: "It bears repetition that the SBI is now revealing information [alongwith that already disclosed] which will show:
> The name of the purchaser of the bond, > The denomination and specific number of the bond, > The name of the party that has encashed the bond, > Last four digits of the bank account number of political parties, > The denomination and number of the bond encashed
Earlier, the SBI had given two lists to the Election Commission, which were released by the poll panel on its website on March 14.
The first had the names of the donors, the denominations of the bonds, and the dates on which they were purchased.
The second one had names of the political parties as well as the denominations of the bonds and the dates on which they were encashed.