New Delhi (TIP)- The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday, March 21, released State Bank of India (SBI) data listing the unique serial number linked with each electoral bond (EB) and other details about beneficiaries and donors, allowing the matching purchasers of bonds with the political parties that received the funds. The latest tranche of data – the third such trove to be released over the past two weeks on the orders of the Supreme Court – appeared to be the final key to the political funding puzzle locked away behind a veil of anonymity that was finally dispelled by the Supreme Court when it held the scheme unconstitutional last month.
“In compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions, SBI has provided data pertaining to electoral bonds to ECI today i.e. March 21, 2024. The ECI has uploaded it on its website as received from SBI on an ‘as is where is basis’,” the poll body said in a statement.
The two sets of data – 552 pages of details of redemption by political parties and 386 pages of details of donors – cover electoral bonds purchased and redeemed from April 12, 2019 until January 11, 2024. In the end, SBI took three days to disclose the data that it had asked the Supreme Court three months time for.
The data revealed that Tamil Nadu-based Future Gaming and Hotel Services, the top donor that accounted for Rs 1,365 crore worth bonds, donated across party lines. Out of this, 39.7% (Rs 542 crore) went to the All India Trinamool Congress, 36.8% (Rs 503 crore) to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), 11.3% (Rs 154 crore) to the YSR Congress, 7.3% (Rs 100 crore) to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and 3.7% (Rs 50 crore) to the Congress. The second highest donor – Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) – donated 60.5% of its Rs 966 crore to the BJP and 20.2% (Rs 195 crore) to the Telangana-based Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
The third highest donor, Thane-based Qwik Supply Chain donated 91.5% of its Rs 410 crore to the BJP followed by 6% (Rs 25 crore) to the Shiv Sena. It donated Rs 10 crore (2.4%) to Nationalist Congress Party. According to Zaubacorp, a website that scrapes data from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, and LinkedIn profiles, two of the directors of the firm are employees of the Reliance group and are directors of multiple Reliance Group companies.
Mining behemoth Vedanta Limited donated Rs 230.15 crore, or 57.5% of its total bonds worth Rs 400.35 crore, to the BJP, followed by Rs 125 crore (31.2%) to the Congress.
The Kolkata-based RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group’s Haldia Energy donated 74.5% of its Rs 377 crore to the TMC followed by Rs 81 crore (21.5%) to the BJP.
For the BJP, which received Rs 5,594.2 crore, MEIL was the largest donor at Rs 584 crore, followed by Qwik Supply Chain at Rs 375 crore and Vedanta at Rs 230.15 crore. Others contributed Rs 4,032.15 crore. In all, the BJP netted Rs 6,061 crore of the Rs 8,252 crore between April 12, 2019 and January 11, 2024.
The TMC received its biggest chunk of funds from Future Gaming at Rs 542 crore, followed by Haldia Energy at Rs 281 crore and Dhariwal Infrastructure at ?90 crore. Others contributed Rs 588.12 crore. In all, the TMC netted Rs 1,610 crore of the Rs 1,708 crore between April 12, 2019 and January 11, 2024.
For the Congress, the biggest donor was Vedanta at Rs 125 crore, followed by Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited at ?110 crore and MJK Enterprise at ?91.6 crore. In all, the Congress netted Rs 1,422 crore of the Rs 1,952 crore between April 12, 2019 and January 11, 2024.
The data disclosure has gained additional importance given that it was revealed just weeks ahead of general elections, where political funding is expected to be among the issues raised during the campaign.
The data solves the mystery of who anonymously donated Rs 10 crore to the Samajwadi Party by post. Keventer Food Park Infra, a part of the Kolkata-based FMCG group Keventer, donated 10 Rs 1 crore bonds to the SP. These bonds were bought on May 7, 2019 and redeemed by the party on May 10, 2019.
But another mystery — of who handed over a sealed envelope with 10 Rs 1 crore bonds to the Janata Dal (United) in its office on April 3, 2019 — still persists because the bonds were credited into JD(U)’s account on April 10, two days before the cut-off of April 12 .
Under the 2018 EB scheme — which was quashed by a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on February 15 because it completely anonymised contributions made to political parties — each electoral bond is imprinted with a unique number that can assist in tracking the issuance and redemption of bonds, and in tracing the bond back to the purchaser.
On March 18, the bench led by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud ordered SBI to disclose the unique serial number associated with each EB and all other information the bank possesses while supplying the ECI with data for public release.
On the day, the bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, noted that the February 15 judgment required SBI to disclose all information in its possession, which will include alphanumeric numbers and serial numbers, besides the date of purchase or redemption, the recipient’s or buyer’s name, and the denomination of EBs.
It called for a categorical affidavit of the SBI chairman by 5pm on March 21 that the bank has disclosed all the information in its custody and that no details have been withheld. The court further directed that as soon as ECI receives the information from SBI, it will post it on its website “forthwith”.
Complying with this direction, the SBI chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara filed his affidavit on Thursday afternoon, stating that “SBI has now disclosed all details and that no details (other than complete bank account numbers and KYC Details) have been withheld from disclosure.”