How RTIs exposed the Electoral Bonds opacity — citizen guide 2026

The Electoral Bonds scheme, introduced in 2018, allowed companies and individuals to buy bonds from the State Bank of India and donate them to political parties — anonymously, from the perspective of the public. The donor's identity was known only to the SBI. No public disclosure was required. This created a structural opacity over India's political financing that several RTI applicants set out to pierce — years before the courts acted.

Multiple RTI applications were filed over 2018–2023 to the SBI, the Election Commission of India (ECI), and the Finance Ministry. Among those publicly documented:

• S Y Quraishi, former Chief Election Commissioner of India, sought information from the ECI about the number, value, and recipient breakdown of Electoral Bonds.
• Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd.), a prolific RTI applicant with a record on defence procurement, filed multiple applications to the Finance Ministry and PMO about the scheme's design and the SBI's role.
• Several activists and journalists associated with the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and the Common Cause organisation filed RTI applications as part of their broader litigation strategy.

The RTI questions, as filed and reported, included:

1. How many Electoral Bonds have been purchased from the SBI, in what denominations, and in what total value, since the scheme's inception in January 2018?
2. What is the denomination-wise and party-wise breakdown of bonds encashed by registered political parties?
3. What due diligence, if any, does the SBI conduct on the identity of bond purchasers before issuing bonds?
4. Copies of any inter-ministerial notes or Finance Ministry file notings related to the design of the scheme, including any objections raised by the RBI or ECI.

The responses were a masterclass in RTI refusal:

• The SBI declined to provide bond-wise or purchaser-wise data, citing Section 8(1)(e) (information held in fiduciary capacity) and Section 8(1)(j) (personal privacy of purchasers). It argued that disclosing donor identities would violate confidentiality that was central to the scheme's design.
• The Election Commission disclosed the aggregate amount of bonds encashed by parties in its annual reports — which it was required to do — but did not hold the per-bond donor data (that resided with the SBI). Some ECI responses noted that the Commission itself had previously opposed the scheme's anonymity provisions in internal communications to the government.
• The Finance Ministry withheld the file notings about scheme design, citing §8(1)(a) (national security / sovereignty) and the broader public interest exemption — an application of §8 that RTI practitioners argued was a stretch.

The CIC partially upheld some complaints, directing limited disclosure in a few cases, but the core transparency question remained unresolved through the RTI route alone.

Journalism: The Wire, The Hindu, and Scroll published detailed investigations in 2019–2023 using the partial RTI data available, cross-referenced with ECI returns, to construct partial pictures of which parties received the most bonds. These stories maintained public pressure on the scheme.

Litigation: ADR and Common Cause filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court challenging the Electoral Bonds scheme's constitutionality. The RTI denials and the scheme's structural opacity formed part of the PIL's factual foundation — establishing that no RTI route remained open for citizens to know who was funding which party.

Supreme Court judgment (February 2024): A Constitution Bench struck down the Electoral Bonds scheme in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (2024), holding that it violated voters' right to information under Article 19(1)(a). The Court directed the SBI to disclose all bond purchase and redemption data to the ECI, which published the full dataset in March 2024.

The RTI-produced record — years of applications, refusals, and partial disclosures — was part of the contextual foundation that the PIL built on.

What this case proves you can do:

1. Document institutional opacity. Even RTI refusals are evidence. A systematic pattern of refusals over five years became part of the public record showing that no transparency mechanism existed.
2. Feed litigation. RTI data and RTI refusal orders can be appended to PILs and court petitions as documentary evidence of the problem.
3. File to a former CEC. The most effective RTI applicants in this cluster included a former Election Commissioner — demonstrating that RTI is a citizen tool used by people at all levels, including those who understand the system from inside.

If you want to follow up: The full Electoral Bonds data disclosed by the ECI in March 2024 is publicly available at eci.gov.in. You can file RTIs to the SBI or ECI for more granular data than what was disclosed.

• Supreme Court judgment — Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (2024) — main.sci.gov.in
• Association for Democratic Reforms Electoral Bonds tracker — adrindia.org
• The Wire investigation on Electoral Bonds (2019 onwards) — thewire.in/politics/electoral-bonds
• The Hindu on ECI opposition to Electoral Bonds — thehindu.com
• Scroll analysis of bond data post-disclosure — scroll.in

The Supreme Court's 2024 ruling required the SBI to disclose all bond data to the ECI, which published it. The dataset is publicly available at eci.gov.in. You can file an RTI for any additional data not in the published set — for example, state-wise or quarter-wise breakdowns — though the SBI may still cite statutory exemptions.

Not directly. The RTI route was systematically blocked by the SBI and Finance Ministry. What worked was the PIL route, which used the documented RTI failures as evidence of the opacity problem. This is a case where RTI's greatest contribution was demonstrating what it could not reach.

No. The Supreme Court struck down the scheme in February 2024. No new bonds can be issued. The SBI disclosed all historical bond data to the ECI in March 2024 as directed by the Court.

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