The Election Commission of India has released the latest data on electoral bonds. Of the total electoral bonds sold in the 2019-20 period, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received the lion's share at 76 percent, while the Congress received just 9 percent of the total electoral bond funds.

For reference, the total funding via the bonds amounted to Rs 3,355 crore. Of that, Rs 2,555 crore went to the BJP, while the Congress received Rs 318 crore. For the BJP, it is a 75 percent jump compared to the 2018-19 period, while for the Congress donations via electoral bonds were down 17 percent. The third highest donations were received by the Trinamool Congress at a little over Rs 100 crore.

Besides that, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) collected Rs 29.25 crore, DMK Rs 45 crore, Shiv Sena Rs 41 crore, Rashtriya Janata Dal Rs 2.5 crore, and the Aam Aadmi Party Rs 18 crore.

In an interview with Major General (Retd) Anil Verma, Head of Association for Democratic Reforms, said, "Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) had filed a PIL in this regard wherein we had asked for the scraping of this scheme because the donor's identity is disclosed. It is exactly because of this reason that such huge amounts of funds are now being pumped into the political party's coffers. When the PIL was heard in the Supreme Court where we had asked for a ban on the sale of the electoral bonds before the elections but somehow the Supreme Court did not agree to that."

Watch video for more.

(Edited by : Bivekananda Biswas)