The Election Commission released data that cleared the air on who funded which party for £1.22 billion worth of electoral bonds, or about 74% of the total issued, based on information provided to it by SBI following a Supreme Court order.
The data showed that the biggest donors to BJP, which got about half of the amounts raised through EBs, were Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering & Infrastructure Ltd (£58.4 mn), Qwik Supply Chain (£37.5 mn), mining and metals giant Vedanta Ltd (£23 mn) and Bharti Airtel (£18.3 mn). For Congress, the biggest chunks came from Vedanta (£12.5 mn) and Western UP Power Transmission Co (£11 mn), which is part of the Megha group.
While nine separate entities contributed more than £10 mn to BJP and another 11 gave between £5 mn and 10 mn, Congress had just two firms that donated over £10 mn and another four in the £5-10 mn range. Trinamool, the third largest recipient of EB funds, had lottery major Future Gaming and Hotel Services Pvt Ltd as its biggest benefactor (£54.2 mn) and Haldia Energy of the RPG Sanjeev Goenka group as the next biggest with £28.1 mn.
The biggest donor, Future Gaming and Hotel Services Pvt Ltd gave the biggest portion of its largesse to regional parties like Trinamool (£54.2 mn), DMK (£50.3 mn) and Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRCP (£15.4 mn), but also gave BJP £10 mn and Congress £5 mn.
The second biggest donor, Megha Engineering, gave BJP £58.4 mn, followed by BRS (£19.5 mn) and DMK (£8.5 mn). Qwik Supply was the third biggest donor and has been linked to Reliance with one of its directors identifying himself as head of accounts (consolidation) at RIL and another holding directorships in a number of group companies. Reliance, however, has stated that Qwik is not a subsidiary. The firm gave £37.5 mn of its total donation of £41 mn to BJP, with the rest going to Shiv Sena (£2.5 mn) and NCP (£1 mn).