New Delhi:
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 it cashed within days, but has no information about the donors .
As the Election Commission on Sunday made public hundreds of disclosures with a sealed cover submitted to it by various political parties, documents of Bihar's ruling party showed that it had received electoral bonds worth a total of over Rs 24 crore.
The party also announced the names of Bharti Airtel and Shree Cement as bond donors of Rs 1 crore and Rs 2 crore respectively.
In another filing, the JD(U) disclosed donations totaling Rs 24.4 crore through these bonds, many of which were issued by SBI branches in Hyderabad and Kolkata, and a few in Patna.
However, the most interesting submission was made by the party's Bihar office, which said it was not aware of the details of the donors of the bonds received at its Patna office on April 3, 2019, nor did it attempt to to find out because at that time there was no order from the Supreme Court.
“Someone came to our office in Patna on April 3, 2019 and handed over a sealed envelope and when it was opened, we found some electoral bonds containing 10 bonds of Rs 1 crore each.
“Accordingly, as per the gazette notification of the Government of India, we opened and deposited an account in SBI Main Branch, Patna, which was credited to our party account on April 10, 2019. In this view of the situation, we have not been able to provide further details about the donors,” the JD(U) said.
In the same submission, the party named Shri Cement and Bharti Airtel as its other donors.
In one of its documents, the Samajwadi Party disclosed total donations worth Rs 10.84 crore, of which, it said, 10 bonds, totaling Rs 10 crore, had been received “by post (no name)”.
For the remaining amount, the Akhilesh Yadav-led party listed SK traders, San Beverages, AK Traders, KS Traders, BG Traders and AS Traders as donors.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)