In a major exposé, an investigation by The Quint revealed that electoral bonds have hidden alphanumeric numbers printed on them to track down the link between donors and political parties.
This apparent outmaneuvering by the government poses a critical question – in the name of more ‘transparency’ in political funding, following the introduction of electoral bonds, are we being subjected to an unprecedented secret surveillance?
Electoral bonds were promised to be anonymous as no one other than the donor themselves is supposed to know which political party they are contributing to.
The Quint’s investigation reveals that while the public will remain clueless about who has donated to which party, the government has access to those details, collated through alphanumeric numbers on the electoral bonds, which are invisible to the naked eye. This adds to the government’s already burgeoning repository of data, which now may not only have details of our bank accounts and financial transactions, but also our likely political preferences.
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