Interest-free bonds for political funding, with 15-day validity, will be available at select SBI branches
99 per cent of donations received by political parties between March 2018 and January 24, 2019 were as electoral bonds of Rs 10 lakh and Rs one crore.
Electoral bond is like a promissory note that can be bought by any Indian citizen or company incorporated in India from select branches of State Bank of India
The government, however, did not give any reason for reducing the time period for sale of electoral bonds
Last month, the Election Commission had written to all recognised political parties to comply with the Supreme Court directives
"RTI reveals how 'electoral bonds' became instruments of anonymous donations bordering on opaque 'money laundering'," Surjewala said in a tweet.
Interest-free bonds can be purchased from SBI for 10 days in the months of Jan, April, July & Oct; bonds not to carry name of payee
The guidelines for electoral bonds are almost ready and some fine-tuning is being done by the finance ministry
The RBI was asked details of the draft electoral bond scheme
Jaitley had also announced capping of anonymous cash donations to political parties at Rs 2,000
After GST, the government now plans to shift focus to electoral funding reforms
EC opposed state funding saying it will not be able to check candidate's own expenditures
He replied as FM Jaitley said that identity of donors through these bonds will be anonymous
The SBI main branches in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Bengaluru, Gandhinagar, Bhopal, Jaipur, Chennai, Lucknow and Guwahati have been authorised to sell and encash the Bonds
The Congress on Monday alleged that the Modi government had overruled the RBI to introduce electoral bonds to enable "black money to enter the BJP coffers" and demanded that the scheme be scrapped.
P Radhakrishnan was the Minister of State for Finance back then