Bonds of loyalty: what ECI data on political funding shows
Mint analysis of the data released by the Election Commission of India showed. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led with over 40 repeat corporate donors demonstrating loyalty, followed by the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) with 16. This analysis defines loyal donors as companies that donated more than once—and each time to the same party.
Among such donors, the one with the most purchases was Kolkata-based Ripley & Co. Stevedoring & Handling Pvt Ltd, whose seven donations were all encashed by the AITC. In terms of donation value, DLF Commercial Developers topped the list with five contributions to the BJP, amounting to ₹130 crore.
The analysis covered 762 corporate donors whose details could be conclusively mapped to the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) database and whose beneficiary parties could be identified. (This exercise was done by our partners at howindialives.com.) These accounted for 94% of the total value of bonds purchased between 12 April 2019 and 11 January 2024. Out of 762 corporate donors, only 263 bought electoral bonds more than once within the observed timeframe.
Among these, a mere 91 consistently supported the same political party with their donations, indicating that the majority varied their political contributions at least once. Megha Engineering and Infrastructure was the most frequent purchaser, acquiring bonds on 36 occasions and supporting nine different parties, with the BJP often being the primary recipient in scenarios of multi-party donations. The BJP, the biggest beneficiary of all, had at least 362 distinct corporate donors, with 43 of them being repeat loyal donors (the biggest being Gurugram-based DLF Commercial Developers).
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