New Delhi: It took over 12 days after the Supreme Court struck down electoral bonds as unconstitutional for the finance ministry to instruct the State Bank of India (SBI) to formally put a hold on the printing of bonds, documents brought to light under the Right to Information Act has revealed.The Indian Express reported on Saturday (March 30) that the file notings of correspondence and emails exchanged between the finance ministry and the SBI showed that the instructions only came on February 28.The apex court had initially reserved its verdict on November 2 last year after days of consecutive hearings.Three months later, on February 15, it declared the electoral bonds scheme “unconstitutional” and ordered the Election Commission to publish the details of donations on its website.The newspaper reported that a note dated February 27 “put on record that the order was for printing 400 booklets and 10,000 Electoral Bonds and that the approval of the “Government of India” for placing the order to SPMCIL [the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India] was finally given on February 12”.On the same day, the finance ministry’s budget section wrote that the “State Bank of India is requested to kindly communicate immediately to SPMCIL to put a hold on the printing of the remaining 1,650 Electoral Bonds for which approval had been given.”A day later, the assistant general manager of the SBI’s transaction banking department sent out orders to stop printing in a trail-mail titled ‘Hold on Printing of Electoral Bonds – Electoral Bond Scheme 2018’.As per the file notings quoted by the Express, the SBI official wrote:“We have acknowledged the receipt of 4 boxes of Security forms of Electoral Bonds containing total 8350 Bonds email dated 23.02.2024… As in the light of judgment given by the Honourable Supreme Court, we request you to put a hold on the printing of the remaining 1,650 Electoral Bonds for which approval had been given via Budget Division Letter dated 12.01.2024.”This means that just before the final order to stop printing, the SPMCIL had already dispatched 8,350 bonds worth Rs 1 crore each.This had also been revealed through an RTI query filed by transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra.As per the Election Commission’s data, the BJP redeemed Rs 8,251.8 crore through electoral bonds since 2018, accounting for half of the total bond value of Rs 16,518 crore sold during this period.