Amendment in Electoral Bonds Scheme

November 12, 2022

The Electoral Bond Scheme has been amended by the Indian Government.

What are the changes made in the scheme?

The Union Finance Ministry issued a notification amending the Electoral Bonds Scheme to allow the sale of electoral bonds for extra 15 days in the year of general elections to the Legislative Assembly of States and UTs with legislature.
The notification allows the Central Government to open additional one-week window for issuing electoral bond starting from November 9, 2022.
Prior to this notification, these bonds can be bought by any individual in a period of 10 days each in the months of January, April, July and October as specified by the Central Government.
Since assembly elections to various states and union territories are held each year, the amendment allows additional 15 days of bond sales annually.
The changes came days before the Himachal Pradesh Assembly Elections (November 12) and weeks before Gujarat assembly elections that are set to be held in early December 2022.

What are electoral bonds?

The Electoral Bonds Scheme was launched in 2018 to provide an alternative for cash donations to political parties. Electoral bonds are financial instruments through which anyone can donate money to political parties.

The electoral bonds can be bought by donors from authorized branches of the State Bank of India using cheque or a digital mechanism. The donor can give these bonds to the political party or parties of their choice. The political parties can choose to encash electoral bonds within 15 days of receiving them and fund their electoral expenses. This retains the anonymity of the donor while also ensuring transparency. Bonds are issued only to those political parties that are registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and those that secured not less than 1 per cent of votes polled in the last General Elections to the Lok Sabha or the Legislative Assembly of the State.

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