Political parties received huge donations from Electrol Bonds.
This was revealed in the information made public by State Bank of India. Now the information received under the Right to Information Act has revealed that SBI has also benefited from this entire process.
From 2018 to 2024, the sale of electoral bonds was conducted in about 30 phases. Transaction and bank fees were charged for each step. SBI had submitted a total bill of Rs 10.68 crore as commission to the Finance Ministry since the beginning.
The lowest commission of Rs 1.82 lakh was received for the fourth phase of this scheme. During this period only 82 bonds were encashed.
The highest commission received in the ninth phase was Rs 1.25 crore. Let us tell you that 4,607 bonds were sold before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Let us tell you that State Bank had to regularly send reminders to the Ministry for payment of dues.
The then SBI Chairman Rajneesh Kumar had also written a letter to the then Economic Affairs Secretary SC Garg on 13 February 2019.
By then, the dues of SBI for seven phases had increased to Rs 77.43 lakh.
In this letter, SBI Chairman had also written how the commission is being calculated. He wrote, “The commission claim lodged by the bank is considered very reasonable.
This claim is in line with government commission rates. The fee per transaction is fixed at Rs 50 for physical bonds and Rs 12 for online transactions. Talking about payment, a commission of 5.5 paise is deducted for every Rs 100.”
SBI had argued that 18% GST on commission should also be paid to it. The bank had blamed the ministry for imposing 2% TDS on GST.
In an email dated June 11, 2020, SBI had asked for a refund of Rs 6.95 lakh. This amount was deducted as TDS on GST from the commission of Rs 3.12 crore paid for the bonds.
The bank had alerted the Finance Ministry about misprinting of electoral bonds. In a letter dated March 23, 2021, SBI said that 94 electoral bonds have been received which have been wrongly printed.
Keeping security in mind, the hidden serial number should have been visible only when ultraviolet (UV) light falls on it.