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Lottery firm top donor as EC uploads electoral bonds data
Top donors to political parties through electoral bonds were a Tamil Nadu lottery firm and an Andhra Pradesh infrastructure company, shows ECI data.
A Tamil Nadu-based lottery firm and an Andhra Pradesh-based infrastructure company were among the top donors to political parties through electoral bonds bought between April 12, 2019 and February 15, 2024, data uploaded by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday evening showed, a day before the deadline set by the Supreme Court in the high-profile case playing out weeks before general elections.
The data, uploaded on the ECI website in two documents, showed that around 1,260 companies and individuals bought 22,217 bonds worth ₹12,155.51 crore in this period.
In this period, 20,421 bonds worth ₹12,769.09 crore were redeemed by 23 political parties, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leading the pack with a war chest of ₹6,061 crore (47.5% of total redeemed value), followed by the Trinamool Congress with ₹1,610 crore (12.6%) and Congress with ₹1,422 crore (11.1%).
The top five buyers include Tamil Nadu-based Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR ( ₹1,208 crore), Telangana-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited ( ₹1,186 crore including ₹220 crore worth of bonds bought by its subsidiary Wester Up Power Transmission), Thane-based Qwik Supply Chain Private Limited ( ₹410 crore), Vedanta Limited ( ₹400.7 crore) and Haldia Energy Limited ( ₹377 crore).
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“In compliance of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s directions…the State Bank of India (SBI) had provided the data pertaining to the electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on March 12, 2024. The Election Commission of India has today uploaded the data on electoral bonds on its website as received from SBI on as is where is basis,” said a press note released by ECI.
“It may be recalled that in the said matter, ECI has consistently and categorically weighed in favour of disclosure and transparency, a position reflected in the proceedings of the Hon’ble Supreme Court and noted in the order also.”
The value of redeemed bonds is greater than the value of purchased bonds because the State Bank of India gave data from April 12, 2019, the date of the apex court’s interim order. The 2019 interim order was delivered in the midst of the sale of one tranche of electoral bonds between April 1 and April 20. As a result, of the 3,346 bonds purchased between April 1 and April 11, 2019, only 1,609 bonds were redeemed before the order. The rest were redeemed in the remaining nine days.
Among other major donors were steel magnate Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, industrialist BK Goenka, Jainendra Shah and one person going by only the first name of Monika.
Bajaj Auto bought bonds worth ₹18 crore, Bajaj Finance ₹20 crore, three IndiGo firms ₹36 crore, Spicejet ₹65 lakh, and Rahul Bhatia of IndiGo, ₹20 crore.
“The info of electoral bonds uploaded by EC (which they say is as received from SBI), does not give the serial number of the bonds, which is necessary for finding who gave bond to whom. This was implicit in SC Jt. SBI affidavit said this info is recorded though in separate silos,” advocate Prashant Bhushan, who appeared in the case, posted on X.
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EBs, which were bearer banking instruments that do not carry the name of the buyer or payee, used to go for sale in 10-day windows in the beginning of every quarter— in January, April, July and October — besides an additional 30-day period specified by the central government during the Lok Sabha election years.
Introduced in 2018, EBs were available for purchase at any SBI branch in multiples of ₹1,000, ₹10,000, ₹1 lakh, ₹10 lakh and ₹1 crore and could be bought through a KYC-compliant account. There was no limit on the number of electoral bonds that a person or company could purchase. Donations made under this scheme by corporate and even foreign entities through Indian subsidiaries enjoyed 100% tax exemption while identities of the donors were kept confidential both by the bank as well as the recipient political parties.
But on February 15, a five-judge Constitution bench struck down the scheme, declaring it to be “unconstitutional” because it completely anonymised contributions made to political parties, and added that restricting black money or illegal election financing – some of the articulated objectives of the scheme – did not justify violating voters’ right to information in a disproportionate manner.
The bench directed SBI – the only designated EB-issuing bank – to stop the issuance of EBs, adding that the bank should submit details of EBs purchased since April 12, 2019, till that date to the poll watchdog by March 6. By March 13, the judgment ordered all funding received by political parties – since the court issued an interim direction to parties to submit such information with ECI – to be made public on ECI’s website.
On March 4, SBI told the top court it needed till June to break down the details of 22,217 EBs. But last week, the apex court rejected the plea and gave the bank one day.
On Monday, the apex court also directed ECI to “publish the details of the information which was supplied to this court in pursuance of the interim orders”. This refers to the bond redemption data that political parties submitted in sealed covers to ECI in compliance with the top court’s April 12, 2019, and November 2, 2023, orders.
The poll body filed an application on Thursday to get the sealed covers back from the court so that it could upload the remaining information. “[I]n compliance of the orders passed by this Hon’ble Court and in order to maintain the confidentiality of the aforesaid information/data, the Election Commission of India forwarded the documents received by it to this Hon’ble Court in sealed covers/boxes, without retaining any copies of the same. Thus, no copies of the documents/statements filed by the Election Commission of India before this Hon’ble Court in the instant case were ever retained by it,” the poll body said in its application.
The EC said that it had submitted one sealed cover (with 106 sealed envelopes), and two sealed boxes (with 309 and 214 sealed envelopes respectively), in two tranches. The petition will be heard on Friday.
