Electoral bonds will be issued by a notified bank for specified denominations. If you are keen to donate to a political party, you can buy these bonds by making payments digitally or through cheque. You are then free to gift the bond to a registered political party. The bonds will likely be bearer bonds and the identity of the donor will not be known to the receiver.

The party can can convert these bonds back into money via their bank accounts. The bank account used must be the one notified to the Election Commission and the bonds may have to be redeemed within a prescribed time period.

Currently, political parties are required to report any donation of over ₹20,000 to the IT department. But there has been a trend of more donations flowing by way of hard cash in smaller amounts. To fix this, the Budget has reduced the disclosure limit to ₹2,000 and insists that any amount over this must be paid through cheque or the digital mode. The idea is that electoral bonds will prompt donors to take the banking route to donate, with their identity captured by the issuing authority.

But there are loopholes to electoral bonds too. While the identity of the donor is captured, it is not revealed to the party or public. So transparency is not enhanced for the voter.