NEW DELHI : In eight states of the Hindi heartland, which elect about 200 Lok Sabha members, the fund flow to regional parties through the now-scrapped electoral bond scheme was poor in comparison to their southern counterparts and the BJP, according to data disclosed by the Election Commission and the parties.
The eight states are Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Utatrakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Haryana.
The BJP, which is the ruling party in six of the 8 states and in power though an alliance in one, got Rs 6986.5 crore through electoral bonds between March 2018 and July 2023. But none of the major regional parties in these states could manage to find a place in the list of big gainers, barring Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD, Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) and Akhilesh Yadav-led SP.
UP has 80 Lok Sabha seats, Bihar 40, MP 29, Rajasthan 25, Jharkhand 14, Chhattisgarh 11, Haryana 10 and Uttarakhand 5. In the politically crucial UP, only one out of the five major regional parties received contributions through the electoral bonds, which was introduced by the Centre in 2017. The parties which did not receive funds include the BSP, the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) ASP, Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and the RLD.
Making the disclosure on behalf of the party, SP secretary general Ram Gopal Yadav submitted to the EC that the party received electoral bonds worth Rs 84 lakh in April 2019 and another Rs 3 crore on January 10, 2022, ahead of the UP assembly polls. The party also submitted that in May 2019, ahead of the general election, it received electoral bonds worth Rs 10 crore via “unnamed” sources “by post”.
Later, in the data released by the EC, the SP’s donors were identified as Gurugram-based SK Traders, Jaipur-based BS Traders, Delhi-based AS Traders, Faridabad-based BG Traders, and San Beverages Pvt Ltd. In adjacent Bihar, the RJD in its submission to the EC informed about receiving an electoral bond worth Rs 1 crore during 2019 general election and another tranche worth Rs 55 crore between July and October 2023.
The JD(U) had disclosed that it received electoral bonds worth Rs 24.40 crore -- including the first lot worth Rs 13 crore in April 2019 and the second one worth Rs 1.40 crore in October 2020 — days before the first phase of the assembly elections. The party received the last tranche worth Rs 10 crore in January 2022.
The electoral bonds scheme was announced in the 2017-18 Budget on 1 February 2017. The Finance Bill, 2017 made elaborate changes in the Companies Act, the Income Tax Act, the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) Act, and the Representation of People Act to build the architecture of the scheme. The Parliament did, after considerable discussion, pass the Finance Bill to lay the legal bedrock for electoral bonds.
The Supreme Court on February 15 scrapped electoral bond scheme.
