The bond data uploaded by the Election Commission (EC) suggests that the Trinamool Congress redeemed poll bonds totalling Rs 1609 crore from April 2019 and January 2024.
This makes TMC the second largest recipient of electoral bonds between the said time period.
The data also suggests that the party redeemed 65 electoral bonds worth Rs 43.4 crore in October-November 2020 and January 2021. This was the first year of Covid-19.
Notably, assembly elections were held in West Bengal between March 27 and April 29, 2021. In April, the TMC redeemed 171 electoral bonds worth Rs 55.44 crore — up from the months preceding the elections. But in July, after the party came back to power — the election results were declared on May 2 — it redeemed 337 electoral bonds totalling Rs 107.56 crore.
The redemptions totalled Rs 141.92 crore in October 2021, and in January 2022, it was Rs 224 crore. Thereafter, there was a brief dip in the redemption of poll bonds. In April 2022, the TMC redeemed bonds of Rs 18 crore. In July 2022, that figure went up to Rs 66.5 crore. And in October 2022, the party redeemed electoral bonds amounting to Rs 143 crore.
However, in their electoral bond disclosure for 2018-19, the party said that some anonymous persons gave sealed envelopes in their respective offices in Kolkata and so they do not know who made the donations, a source said.
The TMC did not disclose the identities of donors who collectively donated nearly Rs 75 crore through electoral bonds to the party between July 16, 2018 and May 22, 2019.
“These bonds were mostly sent to our office and dropped in the drop box or some messenger brought it from various sources who wished to support our party on anonymity. So we are not the names or other details of the buyers,” TMC said in its submission to EC on May 27, 2019, a source was quoted.
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