Denominaions of Rs 1 crore accounted for 91 per cent of the Rs 5,896 crores raised during the first eleven of the total twelve Electoral Bond sale phases.
According to the documents acquired by transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, bonds worth Rs 1 crore and Rs 10 lakh accounted for almost 99.7 per cent of the total value of bonds sold in the first 11 phases between March 1, 2018 and July 24, 2019.
Denominations of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000 and Rs 1 lakh accounted for bonds worth Rs 15.06 crore. 11,782 bonds were sold, of which 5,409 were of Rs 1 crore denomination and 4,723 of Rs 10 lakh denomination.
The documents show that high value bonds dominated the collection of money, it proves that most or rather all of the money came from the richest sections of the society.
The RTI document also reveals that 83 per cent of all electoral bonds by value came from just four cities. The SBI branches in Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi and Hyderabad (see table 2) together accounted for bonds worth Rs 5,085 crore of the total Rs 6,128.72 crore. Of the collected amount, Rs 20.25 crore is being deposited in the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund.
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