More than ₹400 crore worth of electoral bonds were sold by the State Bank of India (SBI) in the 10-day window of October, a sharp rise from the ₹32 crore worth of bonds sold in the July tranche, according to data the bank released under the Right to Information.
Assembly poll backdrop
The electoral bond data assumes significance against the backdrop of the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram.
The RTI data, released in response to queries by Factly, also shows that there is next-to-no demand for electoral bonds of smaller denominations and the majority of the bonds sold were in the highest denomination of ₹1 crore.
The data shows that ₹401.73 crore worth of bonds were sold by SBI in the October 1-10 window, the fifth tranche in which the bonds were available for sale. Within this, about 37.5% of the bonds (₹150.7 crore worth) were sold in Mumbai, the highest share among the 11 cities where the bonds were for sale. The city with the second highest sales was Kolkata (₹62.6 crore worth).
The first four tranches saw a huge variation in the value of electoral bonds sold by SBI. In March, for example, SBI sold bonds worth ₹222 crore. In April, ₹114.9 crore worth of bonds were sold, which fell to ₹101 crore in May, and just ₹32 crore in July.
The data from all five tranches shows that barely any electoral bonds were sold in the smaller denominations of ₹1,000, ₹10,000, and ₹1 lakh. For example, in the March and April tranches, a total of just 17 bonds (2.2% of the total) were sold in the ₹1,000 denomination, and none was sold in the ₹10,000 denomination. In contrast, 450 bonds were sold in the ₹10 lakh denomination (58.6% of the total) and 291 in the ₹1 crore denomination (37.9% of the total).
These trends were largely similar in the October tranche as well.
The ₹1,000 denomination made up 0.6% of the total bonds sold in October, the ₹10,000 denomination made up 2.6%, the ₹1 lakh denomination 5.7%, the ₹10 lakh denomination made up 41.6%, and the ₹1 crore denomination made up 49.3%.