New Delhi: With the disclosures made by the Election Commission of India on Sunday (March 17), it is now possible to calculate how much each party received through electoral bonds since the inception of the scheme, in March 2018, until the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional last month.It’s long been known that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been the largest beneficiary of the opaque funding tool, but now we can say exactly how much the party received through this scheme: Rs 8,251.8 crore. That’s out of the total bonds sold worth about Rs 16,518 crore. This means the BJP redeemed just short of 50% of all bonds sold.The party coming in second was the Congress – but far, far behind, with Rs 1,952 crore worth of bonds redeemed. The Trinamool Congress was a close third at Rs 1,705 crore. BJP leaders, however, seem intent on misleading the public about the extent of the party’s gains from the scheme. Delhi BJP leader R.P. Singh, for instance, claimed to ANI that “Out of a total of Rs 20,000 crore electoral bonds, bonds worth Rs 6,000 crore have gone to BJP while bonds worth Rs 14,000 crore have gone to the opposition.” Both the numbers he stated are wrong – he increased the total amount of bonds, and decreased BJP’s redemptions. However, ANI does not seem to have cross-questioned him on this.Where Singh got his false data from, though, is clear – it came from none other than Union home minister Amit Shah, who used the same numbers on Friday when speaking at the India Today Conclave. “There is a perception that the BJP benefitted from the electoral bonds scheme because it is in power…Rahul Gandhi also said it is the biggest extortion racket in the world. Don’t know who writes these things for him,” Shah said. “The BJP received around Rs 6,000 crore through electoral bonds. The total bonds (of all parties) amounted to Rs 20,000 crore. So where did the rest of the bonds worth Rs 14,000 crore go?”While Shah’s remarks came before the latest disclosures from the EC, he would have at least had the correct figures on BJP’s redemptions, and so it appears that he made deliberate attempts to mislead. By the BJP’s own submissions to the EC, which Shah must be familiar with, the party admitted to redeeming a total of Rs 6,987 crore worth of electoral bonds till July 7, 2023.
