Number Theory: Making sense of the poll bond data released by EC

Here are some of the key findings about the firms and their contributions from relevant information on the MCA database

Matching the electoral bonds data released on Thursday with the database of the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) enables us to understand more about the donors who contributed to political parties between 2019 and 2023. We were able to match 771 companies out of 1,263 buyers, covering ₹11,484 crore out of the total ₹12,155 crore. Here are some of the key findings about the firms and their contributions from relevant information on the MCA database.

The electoral bonds data was released on Thursday

Who are the biggest donors?

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  Who are the biggest donors?

  In the data released, there are 1,260 companies and individuals that purchased electoral bonds worth ₹12,769 crore. The top 20, all companies, accounted for ₹5,945 crore — or nearly half of the total amount donated through electoral bonds.
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  Who are the biggest individual donors?

  Ms SN Mohanty is the biggest individual donor in the list with total donations of ₹45 crore. She is followed by Lakshmi Niwas Mitttal who donated ₹35 crore. Here is the list of top ten individual donors.
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  Where are the biggest purchasers located?

  Companies registered in West Bengal were the biggest purchasers, followed by those in Maharashtra and Telangana. Each of these states saw electoral bund purchases top ₹2,000 crore. Tamil Nadu was fourth, with ₹1,633 crore. While the Maharashtra and Telangana tallies were boosted by a handful of companies, there were a greater number of companies spending big on electoral bonds in West Bengal.
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  What do their financials tell us?

  For the 771 companies that were matched with MCA data, we looked for their financial data from CMIE. We got updated data till 2022-23 for 234 companies whose electoral bond purchases amounted to ₹5,477 crore. As many as 159 of these companies bought electoral bonds amounting to less than 5% of their cumulative net profit for the four-year period from 2018-19 to 2022-23 — the period overlapping with the electoral bonds data released by the Election Commission of India this week. For most of these companies, the purchase amount was a small percentage of their net profit. However, there were outliers, with some of the bond buyers being loss-making companies or profit-making companies whose purchases amounted to a large share of their net profit.