We welcomed the statement Prime Minister Narendra Modi often employed using the anti-corruption catchphrase “na khaunga, na khanedunga.” But the electoral bond scheme introduced in 2021 in the name of eradicating political corruption has now been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi termed the Electoral Bond Scheme as the ‘biggest extortion racket’ in the world. While activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan called it ‘the biggest scam’ of Independent India. He alleged four categories of corruption done through it: “the first is chanda do, dhanda lo (give donation and get business), the second is hafta-vasool (extortion), the third is theka lo, rishwat do (bag contract, give bribe), and farzi company.”
The data now made public includes information on bonds that political parties cashed and contributors bought between April 12, 2019 and January 24, 2024. The data also reveals that a number of businesses that have been subject to regulatory action in the last five years have partially or fully donated electoral bonds to the BJP.
A day after the entire data on electoral bonds with alphanumeric codes and bond numbers in two extensive lists – one naming donors and the other comprising names of the parties encashing them – were made public by the Election Commission, activists and petitioners who had challenged the scheme in the Supreme Court vehemently demanded an independent and impartial probe by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), composed of experts.
Addressing press persons at the Press Club of India, New Delhi, they said that 41 corporations under investigation by the CBI, ED, and I-T Department paid Rs.2,471 crore to the BJP through electoral bonds, with Rs.1,698 crore of that amount donated following these agencies’ raids. Bhushan, who represented the petitioners in court, said, “Electoral bonds are the largest scam in independent India, even bigger than 2G and coal scams. In the case of the 2G and coal scams, there were no money trails, but the Supreme Court ordered a SC-monitored probe. What came out in electoral bonds has a money trail, and there should be an SC-monitored probe.”
“After doing a preliminary analysis of the data now available in the public domain, it has been revealed that the BJP received Rs.1,751 crore in donations through electoral bonds from various companies, and in turn, those companies got government contracts worth Rs.62,000 crore,” he added.
Charging that “donors got contracts,” Bhushan stated that 41 firms that were under investigation by the CBI, ED, and I-T Department gave Rs.2,471 crore to the BJP, while 33 companies that donated Rs.1,751 crore received contracts worth Rs.3.7 lakh crore. Of this, he said, Rs. 1,698 crore was given following raids. Additionally, 30 fake companies contributed about Rs.143 crore. In 49 cases, contracts worth Rs.62,000 crore were given after the companies donated around Rs.580 crore to the ruling party. In 192 cases, Rs.551 crore was donated before the contracts were awarded.
He said 33 groups, which have 172 major contracts and project approvals from the government, also made donations through electoral bonds.
“They have got a total of Rs.3.7 lakh crore in projects and contracts, in exchange for Rs.1,751 crore electoral bond donations to the BJP,” he alleged.
Kalpataru Group gave Rs.5.5 crore to the BJP within three months of an I-T raid on it on August 3 last year.
“Future Gaming gave Rs.60 crore to the BJP within three months of I-T and ED raids on November 12, 2023, and December 1, 2021, respectively. Aurobindo Pharma gave Rs.5 crore to the BJP within three months of the ED raid on November 10, 2022,” he added.
Bhushan claimed that the Union Government or state governments led by the ruling BJP had approved at least 49 projects totalling Rs.62,000 crore in postpaid contracts. Within three months, the BJP received Rs.580 crore in “kickbacks” in the shape of electoral bonds for these approvals.
Prof. Jagdeep Chhokar, founder member of Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and chief petitioner in the case, said these data are “proof of the corporate-political nexus that all of us know exists but do not have any proof of” and added that the data that has come out after the Supreme Court verdict is “just the tip of the iceberg”.
The fact that 95% of the bonds issued were of the highest denomination – Rs.1,000 crore – according to RTI activist Anjali Bharadwaj, who is also a board member of Common Cause and one of the petitioners in the case, indicates that there is significant corruption at play. She also questioned whether the SBI was operating on its own.
Introducing the electoral bonds scheme in 2017, the Modi government amended the laws to remove limits on how much a company can donate to political parties. Until then, companies could donate only 7.5% of the average profits of the preceding three fiscal years.
According to the data, Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd. (MEIL), a Hyderabad-based corporation, made the largest donation of any donor to a single political party when it gave Rs.584 crore to BJP. This was 9% of the entire amount donated to BJP, which raised Rs.6,060.5 crore in total and became the largest buyer of electoral bonds. A part of the bonds was donated to BJP by the top 18 corporations, based on the total amount purchased through electoral bonds. The Western U.P. Power Transmission Company Ltd., a MEIL subsidiary, has donated Rs.80 crore to BJP and Rs.110 crore to Congress, making it the third highest recipient. Additionally, MEIL has given Rs.85 crore to Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Rs.195 crore to Bharat Rashtra Samithi, which is the fourth-highest recipient.
Vedanta Ltd. donated Rs.229 crore to BJP, followed by Rs.125 crore to Congress.
Together, MKJ Enterprises Ltd., Keventer Food Park Infra Ltd., and Madanlal Ltd. – all of which have at least one director in common and are registered at the same address in Kolkata – donated Rs.573 crore. BJP received Rs.346 crore, or 60%, of this total, while Congress received Rs.121 crore, or 21%.
Qwik Supply Chain Private Limited, a lesser-known corporation, is the third largest donor. It gave political parties donations totalling Rs.410 crore. Amazingly, during the fiscal year 2021–2022, the corporation donated Rs.360 crore to political parties. Its net profit for the same year was merely Rs.21.72 crore. The corporation contributed an additional Rs.50 crore in donations during the 2023–24 fiscal year.
One wouldn’t recognize the name LaxmidasVallabhdas Merchant, who, despite being one of the top 100 donors, gave Rs.25 crore to political parties through electoral bonds in one go in November 2023. However, the name’s obscurity typically conveys a message.
Three companies linked to the Adani Group bought electoral bonds amounting to a total of Rs.55.4 crore from April 2019 to November 2023. As per the data, Rs.42 crore of these bonds were cashed by BJP.
A company associated with Reliance Industries, led by Mukesh Ambani, bought electoral bonds during the 2019 Lok Sabha election and during a special selling window that was introduced in advance of the 2022 elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The government had introduced a legislative modification that allowed for the 2022 sale.
Between 2017 and 2023, from the onset of the electoral bonds until the end of fiscal year 2023 last year, about Rs.12,000 crore was collected by political parties through electoral bonds. It wasn’t shocking, but two-thirds of that went to the BJP – nearly Rs.6,500 crore. Congress got a meager 9 percent.
In the words of Rahul Gandhi, “Some years back, the Prime Minister came up with a concept that he claimed was designed to clean up Indian political finance, and at the heart of the concept was the idea of the electoral bond – the ability for corporations to give electoral bonds anonymously – but it turns out that this is a way of extorting money from India’s largest corporations. It is a way of stealing money from contracts in the country. It is a way of intimidating corporations and making them… forcing them to give money to the BJP.”
“So, it is the world’s biggest corruption scam. It is the world’s biggest extortion racket, and it is run by the Prime Minister of India. I don’t really expect the Indian media to pick up this in a large way because I know, you know, from past experience what type of things you focus on. But this is a huge theft taking place right in front of everybody’s eyes, and it has been orchestrated by the Indian Prime Minister,” he alleged at a press conference in Mumbai.