Expired Electoral Bonds: Rs 9.63 Crore Remain Uncashed, Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR Tops List

Electoral bonds worth Rs 9.63 crore expired between April 2019 and January 2024 as no political parties encashed the 130 bonds, official data analysed by News18 shows.

The fresh Election Commission numbers issued on Thursday show that 18,741 electoral bonds worth over Rs 12,000 crore were purchased and encashed between April 2019 and January 2024.

Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR, which emerged as the biggest donor in the now-banned scheme, also tops the charts in the expired list. Of the total bonds worth Rs 9.63 crore, Rs 3 crore was from Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR alone. The Future group purchased three bonds on January 21, 2023, that remained uncashed.

Interestingly, in the list of uncashed bonds, the Future group was the only firm that had purchased bonds worth over Rs 1 crore. Other companies/individuals purchased bonds in the denomination of Rs 10 lakh or lesser.

Second after the Future group was ECL Finance Ltd that purchased 20 bonds worth Rs 2 crore in May 2019. These bonds with individual value of Rs 10 lakh each expired after 15 days as per the norms. The same month, Edelweiss Rural & Corporate Services Limited purchased 10 bonds worth Rs 1 crore which expired.

These three firms accounted for over 62 per cent of the total expired funds.

The numbers analysed by News18 also show that of the 130 bonds, 29 were in the denomination of Rs 1,000 – accounting for Rs 29,000. Two were in the denomination of Rs 10,000, while 33 were in the denomination of Rs 1 lakh. As many as 63 bonds were in the denomination of Rs 10 lakh – worth Rs 6.3 crore in total.

Seven bonds worth Rs 25,000 purchased on January 21, 2023, by one Anand Agrawal also expired. These included two in the denomination of Rs 10,000.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ELECTORAL BOND EXPIRES?

As per the scheme, the amount of bonds not encashed within 15 days of issue will get transferred to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund (PMRF).

As per the data from the Association for Democratic Reforms, between March 2018 and July 2021, 146 bonds amounting to Rs 20.28 crore were deposited in the PMRF.

The numbers issued by the ECI on Thursday have the details of the bonds purchased after April 2019.