Political Parties Funding

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Friday said it has not accepted any funding through electoral bonds and it never opened a designated SBI account as required to accept the bonds. "Reports have appeared in some sections of the media that the CPI(M) has received various amounts as contributions through electoral bonds," the CPI(M) said in a statement. "The party wishes to clarify that these reports are false and baseless. The fact is that the CPI(M) has refused to accept electoral bonds on principle. That is why it did not even open a designated State Bank of India account as required by the law to accept electoral bonds," it said. "The CPI(M) had appealed to the Supreme Court against the electoral bonds scheme because of this basic opposition," it added in the statement. In a landmark verdict just months ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Supreme Court on Thursday scrapped the Centre's electoral bonds scheme of anonymous political funding, calling it "unconstitutional" and .

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a plea against the laws allowing political parties' funding through the electoral bond scheme

Political parties encashed electoral bonds worth Rs 1,212 crore in the run-up to the recent round of elections in five states, taking the total of such bonds redeemed to Rs 9,187 crore since 2018

The AIADMK's total expenditure during the elections stood at Rs 57.33 crore, and of that, Rs 56.756 crore went towards publicity

Bhushan, appearing for the Association for Democratic Reforms, said the scheme needed to be stayed as it had become akin for accepting bribe, money laundering and channelisation of black money

So far in FY20, a total of Rs 3,355.93 crore worth of electoral bonds have been sold. This is higher than in the entire previous financial year, when Rs 2,550.78 crore's worth were sold

Total income of 7 national parties stood at Rs 1,033.18 cr