Election Commission Releases Updated Electoral Bonds Data to Public

The Election Commission has released updated data on electoral bonds, which had previously been submitted in sealed envelopes to the Supreme Court and later ordered to be made public. This information pertains to the period before April 12, 2019, while details after this date were disclosed by the poll panel last week. Political parties had submitted data on electoral bonds in compliance with the Supreme Court's interim order of April 12, 2019, with the information placed in sealed covers.

Following the Supreme Court's directive on March 15, 2024, the physical copies of this data, along with a digitized record on a pen drive, were returned to the Election Commission. The Commission has now uploaded the digitized data received from the Supreme Court registry onto its website.

Complying with the order of a five-judge Constitution bench, the Supreme Court registry on Saturday handed the electoral bonds data submitted by the Election Commission back to the body. The commission had requested for the documents, given in 2019 and 2023, to be given back so that it could publish them on its website in accordance with an earlier Supreme Court order.

Hearing the Election Commission's petition on Friday, which said it did not have copies of the documents it had submitted in the sealed cover, the Supreme Court had asked the registry to hand the papers back by 5 pm on Saturday after digitising them. The commission has, in turn, been told to publish them on its website by 5 pm on Sunday.