{"id":20507,"date":"2024-02-15T02:28:40","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T20:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=20507"},"modified":"2025-04-06T01:47:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T20:17:03","slug":"ebs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/ebs\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Electoral Bonds (EBs)?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Electoral Bonds (EBs)<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Electoral bonds are\u00a0interest-free bearer bonds or money instruments that can be\u00a0purchased by companies and individuals in India\u00a0from authorised branches of the\u00a0State Bank of India (SBI).<\/li>\n<li>The bonds are similar to bank notes that are payable to the bearer on demand and are free of interest.<\/li>\n<li>These bonds are\u00a0sold in multiples of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh, and Rs 1 crore.<\/li>\n<li>They can be purchased through a KYC-compliant account\u00a0to make donations to a political party.<\/li>\n<li>EBs have\u00a0a life of only 15 days\u00a0during which it can be\u00a0used for making donations to political parties.<\/li>\n<li>The name and other information\u00a0of the donor are not entered on the instrument and thus electoral\u00a0bonds are said to be anonymous.<\/li>\n<li>There is\u00a0no cap on the number of electoral bonds that a person or company can purchase.<\/li>\n<li>Under the Income Tax act, one\u2019s electoral bond donations are\u00a0considered tax-exempt under Section 80 GG and Section 80 GGB.<\/li>\n<li>Who can receive funding via electoral bonds?\n<ul>\n<li>Only political parties\u00a0registered under Section 29A of the\u00a0Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which\u00a0secured not less than 1% of votes polled\u00a0in the\u00a0last general election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of the State, are eligible to receive electoral bonds.<\/li>\n<li>The political parties\u00a0have to encash them within a stipulated time.<\/li>\n<li>The bond\u00a0can be encashed by an eligible political party\u00a0only through a designated bank account with the authorized bank.<\/li>\n<li>The political parties\u00a0have to disclose the amount to the Election Commission.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is the Election Commission of India (ECI)?<\/h3>\n<p>The Election Commission of India (ECI) is an autonomous and permanent constitutional body responsible for organizing free and fair elections in the Union and States of India. The Constitution grants the ECI with the power of direction, superintendence, and control of elections to Parliament, state legislatures, the office of president of India and the office of vice-president of India. The ECI does not deal with the elections to the urban bodies such as Municipalities and Panchayats in the states and hence, a separate State Election Commission.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/india-news\/supreme-court-calls-electoral-bonds-quid-pro-quo-asks-sbi-to-stop-issuing-them-immediately-101707975296310.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Supreme Court calls electoral bonds &#8216;quid pro quo&#8217;, asks SBI to stop issuing them \u2018immediately\u2019<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Electoral bonds are interest-free bearer bonds or money instruments that can be purchased by companies and individuals in India to make donations to a political party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}