“Unnamed election letters are dropped at the office and sent anonymously,” political parties claim
Several political parties claimed that election letters were sent anonymously by post or simply delivered to their office letterboxes without names.
Electoral bonds: Several political parties declined to share details electoral bond donors mentioned various legal provisions, while others said they received the funding instruments via a “dropbox” or by post without any names.
The DMKwhich received most of the donations from a lottery company, contacted its donors to obtain details of the electoral bonds as demanded by the Supreme Court in 2019.
The BJP cited amendments to the Representation of People Act, 1951 and relevant sections of the Reserve Bank of India Act and the Income Tax Act for not disclosing the donors.
“It is duly submitted that the electoral bonds have been introduced with the aim of raising only responsible funds of political financing while protecting the donors from any repercussions thereof,” the BJP said in its letter to the Election Commission.
The Congress sent a letter to the State Bank of India (SBI) asking for details of the donors of electoral bonds, the amount, the bank account in which it was credited and the date.
The SBI replied to the conference that the details of the electoral bonds were available with the political parties and shared the bank account statement shared with the Commission.
The Samajwadi Party shared details of bonds of relatively smaller amounts of Rs 1 lakh and Rs 10 lakh, but only mentioned that 10 bonds of Rs 1 crore each were received by post without any names.
The DMK, which received nearly 77 percent of its funding from lottery king Santiago Martin’s Future Gaming, said it had contacted the party’s donors to get details of the donations they had made.
“The scheme also does not require the donor’s details to be provided to the donee. … Be that as it may, following the directions of the Supreme Court, we contacted our donors and were able to collect the details from them,” the DMK said.
The Telugu Desam Party mentioned “not immediately available” in the column for listing the names of donors.
The Trinamool Congress said the election letters had been sent to the party office and “had fallen into the mailbox”. The party said some bonds were sent through messengers from several individuals who wanted to support the party, many of whom prefer to remain anonymous.
The NCP, then led by Sharad Pawar, expressed its inability to provide details of the donors for each bond as the party had not maintained details or issued receipts.
The NCP’s letter to the Election Commission stated that several of its office bearers were busy with the election campaign. “Wherever possible, we have mentioned the name of the person through whom the party received bonds,” the NCP said.
The Congress’ Goa unit contacted its donor VM Salgaonkar and Brothers to get details of the electoral bonds worth Rs 30 lakh given by them to the party.
The RJD said details of donations worth Rs 1.5 crore were not immediately available.
The Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) has told the Election Commission that someone delivered an envelope containing electoral bonds worth Rs 10 crore to its office in 2019, which were redeemed by the party.
(Only the headline was reworked by India.com staff. The copy is from an agency feed)