Election Commission uploads full data on Electoral bonds

Election Commission of India has uploaded the full data on electoral bonds, as supplied by State Bank of India, on its website.This data includes two more columns that were missing in the earlier submission by SBI — Bond number and the branch at which the bond was purchased or redeemed.With this, SBI has presumably made public all the data that it has about electoral bonds.Now, it will be up to media organizations and activists to comb through the numbers to make connections between the donors and the recipients of the money.Even before this, many of activists have already tried to make such connections, based on the dates of purchase and redemption and the value of the bonds.Some of these efforts have revealed tentative links between the award of lucrative contracts to companies and ‘donations’ made by these companies to political parties in power at the centre and various states.There have also been some reports that have highlighted how certain companies rushed to buy electoral bonds after they were raided by investigation agencies.So far, parties have rejected suggestions of bribery, collusion or coercion, claiming that not much can be inferred purely from the dates of bond purchase and redemption.With serial numbers now available, it will be easier for data experts to go through the numbers and draw stronger connections.It is expected that such news reports are likely to start appearing as early as tonight.



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