Electoral bond data: Future Gaming and Megha Engineering top donors to political parties
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd head the list of donors to parties through electoral bonds. Late on Thursday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) published details of bond buyers and beneficiaries since April 2019, as per the Supreme Court’s orders, ahead of the 18th Lok Sabha elections.
The data release provides details of electoral bonds worth over Rs 12,000 crore. The information was provided by State Bank of India (SBI), the sole seller of the bonds, and published by the ECI.
Other donor names include the Bharti Group and Vedanta. The information clearly shows the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got the lion’s share over the years, something that’s also clear from the party’s own annual audit reports.
Future Gaming and Megha Engineering have had encounters with controversy. Future Gaming has been under the Enforcement Directorate’s scrutiny.
Megha Engineering is under fire over the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project and was also involved with the Silkyara tunnel project in Uttarakhand where several workers were trapped for days last year.
Other prominent donors include Essel Mining (an arm of Aditya Birla Group), Haldia Energy of the Goenka group, Jindal Steel, the Mahindra Group and the Dhariwals.
Some of India’s largest conglomerates don’t find a mention in the data set, but the entities listed may have connections to them, analysts said. Establishing these links could be a challenging task, they added.
Individuals such as Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw also bought electoral bonds besides the
