CHENNAI: The data on electoral bonds released by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday, pertaining to the period between April 12, 2019 and February 15, 2024, showed that the DMK and the AIADMK, the only two Tamil Nadu-based parties to feature in the list, encashed Rs 639 crore and Rs 6.05 crore respectively.
In this period, AIADMK encashed Rs 6.05 crore on two days in April 2019, just a few days ahead of the Lok Sabha election that year. Around the same period, DMK encashed Rs 7 crore a few days ahead of that election and another Rs 2 crore a few days later.
While the AIADMK never encashed electoral bonds later, DMK, which is shown in the records as ‘DMK Party in Parliament,’ cashed a total of Rs 630 crore on 12 different dates between October 23, 2020 and January 23, 2024.
The highest it cashed in a day was Rs 103 crore on April 7, 2021, one day after the Assembly election, which it went on to win. It cashed Rs 100 crore in a day on two more occasions, on January 11 and April 11, 2022.
The party last encashed bonds worth Rs 20 crore on January 23, 2024. The total amount encashed by the DMK accounted for 5.05 % or roughly one-twentieth of the total of Rs 12,769.09 crore encashed by all 27 different parties in the period with nearly half of it going to the ruling BJP at the centre.