IN THE run-up to the May 10 Karnataka Assembly elections, the State Bank of India (SBI) in April sold electoral bonds worth Rs 970.50 crore, which was nearly nine times the value of electoral bonds sold just ahead of the previous polls in the state in 2018, according to replies from the bank to queries under the Right to Information. A total of 1,470 electoral bonds worth Rs 970.50 crore were sold from April 3 to April 12 in the 26th tranche of sales under the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018, the SBI said in its RTI reply to transparency campaigner Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd.) Tuesday. In April 2018, ahead of the previous Assembly polls in Karnataka in May, the SBI had sold 256 electoral bonds worth Rs 114.90 crore in what was the second tranche of sales. The bank had revealed this in its reply to similar queries under RTI to Batra on April 26, 2018 regarding the second tranche. This time, the SBI branch in Hyderabad had the most sales – Rs 335.30 crore or 34% of the total. This was followed by Kolkata (Rs 197.40 crore), Mumbai (Rs 169.37 crore), Chennai (Rs 122 crore) and New Delhi (Rs 55.65 crore). About 58% of the total bonds sold were encashed in the New Delhi branch of SBI (Rs 565.79 crore), which is where national parties are likely to have their bank accounts. Under the scheme, parties have to open dedicated bank accounts at designated SBI branches for receiving electoral bonds. As of the latest tranche of sales, 25 parties had opened such accounts, the RTI reply showed. In 2018, it was the Mumbai branch that accounted for the highest amount of sales (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 out of the total bonds sold were encashed and in two branches alone – Rs 113.40 crore in New Delhi and Rs 1.50 crore in Bengaluru. Having just launched the scheme, the SBI had offered the bonds in 13 branches as of April 2018, while now the bonds are available in 29 branches.
