Electoral bonds: Cong 2nd-largest gainer, slightly ahead of TMC

When the Election Commission released the first set of data on electoral bonds last week, one of the more surprising revelations was that Trinamool Congress, a regional party restricted largely to one state, had received more than Congress, a national party. Sunday’s fresh data dump from the EC shows that Congress has actually received more through Electoral Bonds than Trinamool, though not by much.
The earlier data was for the period from April 12, 2019 onwards. What was also available in the public domain earlier was the collation of Electoral Bond data for 2017-18 and 2018-19 by the Association for Democratic Reforms. Those two figures combined put the Trinamool ahead of Congress.

The fresh information that Sunday’s release has provided is the data for the first 11 days of 2019-20, that is the period from April 1, 2019 to April 11, 2019, a crucial period for electoral funding as it was on the eve of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The data shows that while Congress encashed EBS worth nearly Rs 142 crore over those 11 days, Trinamool got just Rs 10 crore. As a result, in the total till date, Congress pips Trinamool with Rs 1.952 cr compared to Rs 1,717 cr.