Electoral bonds: 7 Sensex cos in the list, Coimbatore-based firm is top donor
Mint analysis of the data released by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday. Until the Supreme Court quashed the scheme last month, purchasing an electoral bond effectively meant making a political donation that could later be encashed by a political party. The list detailed bonds worth ₹12,155.51 crore purchased by over 1,300 companies in nearly five years.
Future Gaming and Hotel Services alone bought ₹1,368 crore worth of bonds, the only company to surpass the ₹1,000-crore mark. Another 21 companies bought bonds worth between ₹100 and ₹1,000 crore each. Vedanta Ltd was the fourth-largest buyer of electoral bonds, purchasing ₹401 crore worth.
Other major listed companies that appeared among the top buyers included Bharti Airtel ( ₹198 crore), Jindal Steel and Power Ltd ( ₹123 crore), Dr. Reddy’s Lab ( ₹84 crore), and NCC Ltd ( ₹60 crore). It must be noted that a company could buy bonds through its subsidiaries as well, but in this analysis, all arms are treated separately.
The size of bond purchases by several companies might go up if the purchases by their subsidiaries are also added against their names. Only seven out of the 30 Sensex companies featured in the list: Bharti Airtel, UltraTech Cement ( ₹35 crore), Mahindra & Mahindra ( ₹25 crore), Bajaj Finance ( ₹20 crore), Maruti Suzuki ( ₹20 crore), ITC ( ₹6.6 crore), and Tech Mahindra ( ₹1 crore). Identifying which political parties encashed these bonds was not immediately possible, as there is no straightforward method to link each bond purchase with its encashment by political parties.
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