At over ₹4000 crore, Mumbai leads in electoral bond sales, Delhi tops in encashment

The largest share of was sold in Mumbai, since the inception of the donation scheme to political parties in 2018. However, most of the bonds were encashed in Delhi during the period.

According to data compiled by Election Watchdog, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Mumbai contributed about 24 per cent of the now-scrapped bonds worth ₹16,518 crore sold across cities in India until January 2024, with 5426 bonds worth ₹4,009.4 crore.

Following Mumbai, Hyderabad ( ₹3,554 cr), Kolkata ( ₹3,333 cr), New Delhi ( ₹2,324 cr), and Chennai ( ₹1,524 cr) were the top cities in terms of bond sales. These five cities together accounted for over ₹14,744 crore, close to 90 percent worth of 28,030 bonds sold across 18 cities.

The (SC) on February 15 struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme (EBS) and directed the State Bank of India (), the sole issuer of bonds, to submit names of bond buyers, the dates of purchase, and amounts donated to the (EC) by March 6. The poll panel has to publish these on its website by March 13.

Introduced by the Centre in 2018, allowed individuals and corporations to anonymously fund political parties by purchasing electoral bonds from the State Bank of India. The bonds are sold in five denominations- one thousand, ten thousand, one lakh, ten lakh, and one crore.

While Mumbai tops the sale of bonds, the majority of them were redeemed in the national capital New Delhi. According to ADR, one among the four petitioners who had challenged the scheme along with Congress leader Jaya Thakur, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and non-profit Common Cause, as many as 16,982 bonds worth ₹10,402 crore were redeemed in New Delhi between March 2018 and January 2024.

Former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi