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With the Telangana Assembly elections slated for December, Hyderabad was the top choice for buyers and users of electoral bonds (EBs) in the most recent tranche of sales, a Right to Information (RTI) reply from State Bank of India showed. The city accounted for 33 per cent of all sales and 43 per cent of EBs redeemed in July.
The 27th tranche of EBs under the Electoral Bond Scheme went on sale from July 3 to July 12. In a reply to transparency campaigner Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd), SBI said 1,371 EBs, with a value of Rs 812.80 crore, were sold in this tranche. Hyderabad alone had sales of Rs 266.27 crore — the highest of the 29 SBI branches under the scheme — followed by Kolkata (Rs 143.20 crore), Mumbai (Rs 135 crore), New Delhi (Rs 112.54 crore) and Chennai (Rs70.50 crore). Besides Telangana, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are expected to hold elections by the end of the year.
Out of the 1,365 bonds worth Rs 812.75 crore encashed, EBs worth Rs 346.67 crore were redeemed by political parties in Hyderabad.
Bhubaneswar, New Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai made up the rest of the top five branches for encashing of EBs in this round.
EBs worth around Rs 13,791 crore have been sold since the start of the scheme. In an RTI reply to The Indian Express in May, SBI data showed that nearly 90 per cent of all EBs sold till then were from five cities — Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Chennai. The New Delhi branch of SBI accounts for over 64 per cent of all EBs redeemed since 2018.
The scheme was launched in January 2018 with four 10-day sale periods a year — in January, April, July and October — and an additional 30 days of sales in a Lok Sabha election year.
The scheme was then amended in November 2022 to add another 15 days of sales in any Assembly election year. Any party registered with the Election Commission that has received 1 per cent of the votes in the previous Assembly or Lok Sabha elections is eligible to open an account with the SBI for receiving EBs.
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