Electoral bonds: Three days before the Supreme Court verdict, the government approved the printing of Rs 10,000 crore electoral bonds

New Delhi: Many secrets of electoral bonds have now come to light. Three days before the Supreme Court struck down electoral bonds as unconstitutional, the finance ministry had given final approval for printing of 10,000 electoral bonds by SPMCIL (Securities Printing and Minting Corporation of India). The value of each of the A electoral bonds was Rs 1 crore.

But the bonds became meaningless after the Supreme Court order. This comes from correspondence and emails exchanged between the Finance Ministry and SBI received under the Right to Information Act. These data also reveal that SPMCIL had already printed 8350 – and also sent it to SBI. The highest number of 22,217 electoral bonds were released since the inception of the electoral bond scheme. Assistant General Manager, Transaction Banking Division, SBI, wrote: “We admit a total of 8350 bonds were printed ”.