NEW DELHI: The Centre, in a haste, gave sanction to break electoral bond rules to allow ruling party BJP to encash expired bonds, just before the 2018 Karnataka elections, according to The Reporters' Collective.
In 2019, based on official records accessed by Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retd.), The Reporters' Collective had reported that SBI had allowed an unknown political party to encash electoral bonds worth Rs 10 crore even though it came two days after the legally mandated 15-day period to encash bonds had ended.
Now, BJP’s own disclosures made public by the Election Commission of India show that the Union Finance Ministry’s creative interpretation of rules and illegal orders to SBI were made to allow the party to encash Rs 10 crore worth of expired bonds, the Collective said.
"While we now know the BJP was the beneficiary of these bonds, the donor’s identity still remains a mystery," it added.
The breach of electoral bond rules didn’t end here. Even the tranche in which the BJP got these bonds went against the scheme.
According to the rules notified in January 2018, there were to be four 10-day windows in January, April, July and October. The Prime Minister’s Office in 2018 ordered the Finance Ministry to break its rules and open an extra “special” 10-day window for bond sale before the Karnataka elections.
The PMO’s request was first recorded in files by Union Finance Ministry officials in April 2018 – a mere three months after the rules were notified. This exception to rule became a practice. For example, a special 10-day window was opened in December 2022 before the Gujarat state elections, the Collective further said.