SBI Issues Electoral Bonds Worth ₹16,518 Crore; SEBI-Sahara Refunds Total ₹258.47 Crore

6 Feb 2024 , 12:02 PM

State Bank of India (SBI) has issued Electoral Bonds totaling ₹16,518 crore in 30 tranches since the initiation of the scheme in 2018, aiming to ensure transparent tax-paid contributions in political funding through proper banking channels.

Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Chaudhary, disclosed in Lok Sabha that the total value of Electoral Bonds purchased from SBI stands at approximately ₹16,518 crore across Phase-I to Phase-XXX. No GST or other taxes are levied on the purchasers.

The government paid a commission of about ₹8.57 crore to SBI for the issuance and redemption of Electoral Bonds from Phase I to Phase XXV. Additionally, an amount of around ₹1.90 crore was paid to Security Printing & Minting Corporation of India Ltd (SPMCIL).

Regarding the ₹5,000 crore ‘SEBI-Sahara Refund Account,’ an online portal was launched on July 18, 2023, for genuine depositors to submit claims. The disbursement process is supervised by Justice R. Subhash Reddy, Former Judge of the Supreme Court.

Presently, disbursements of up to ₹10,000 are made to each genuine depositor through Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts. The ‘CRCS-Sahara Refund Portal’ has registered approximately 1.21 crore applications, releasing ₹258.47 crore to 2,77,607 depositors of Sahara Group of Cooperative Societies up to January 31, 2024.

In the fiscal year 2023-24, up to January 2024, the RBI conducted eight fine-tuning variable rate repo (VRR) operations amounting to ₹8 lakh crore and three VRR main operations amounting to ₹4.7 lakh crore, contributing to a year-on-year increase in non-food credit by 18.6% in April-November 2023.

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