Electoral bonds: Donor-party link public after SC push

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday released State Bank of India (SBI) data listing the unique serial number linked with each electoral bond (EB) and other details about beneficiaries and donors, allowing the matching purchasers of bonds with the political parties that received the funds.
The latest tranche of data – the third such trove to be released over the past two weeks on the orders of the Supreme Court – appeared to be the final key to the political funding puzzle locked away behind a veil of anonymity that was finally dispelled by the Supreme Court when it held the scheme unconstitutional last month.
“In compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions, SBI has provided data pertaining to electoral bonds to ECI today i.e. March 21, 2024. The ECI has uploaded it on its website as received from SBI on an ‘as is where is basis’,” the poll body said in a statement.
The two sets of data – 552 pages of details of redemption by political parties and 386 pages of details of donors – cover electoral bonds purchased and redeemed from April 12, 2019 until January 11, 2024. In the end, SBI took three days to disclose the data that it had asked the Supreme Court three months time for.
The data revealed that Tamil Nadu-based Future Gaming and Hotel Services, the top donor that accounted for ₹1,365 crore worth bonds, donated across party lines. Out of this, 39.7% ( ₹542 crore) went to the All India Trinamool Congress, 36.8% ( ₹503 crore) to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), 11.3% ( ₹154 crore) to the YSR Congress, 7.3% ( ₹100 crore) to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and 3.7% ( ₹50 crore) to the Congress.

The second highest donor – Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) – donated 60.5% of its ₹966 crore to the BJP and 20.2% ( ₹195 crore) to the Telangana-based Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
The third highest donor, Thane-based Qwik Supply Chain donated 91.5% of its ₹410 crore to the BJP followed by 6% ( ₹25 crore) to the Shiv Sena. It donated ₹10 crore (2.4%) to Nationalist Congress Party. According to Zaubacorp, a website that scrapes data from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, and LinkedIn profiles, two of the directors of the firm are employees of the Reliance group and are directors of multiple Reliance Group companies.
Mining behemoth Vedanta Limited donated ₹230.15 crore, or 57.5% of its total bonds worth ₹400.35 crore, to the BJP, followed by ₹125 crore (31.2%) to the Congress.
The Kolkata-based RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group’s Haldia Energy donated 74.5% of its ₹377 crore to the TMC followed by ₹81 crore (21.5%) to the BJP.
For the BJP, which received ₹5,594.2 crore, MEIL was the largest donor at ₹584 crore, followed by Qwik Supply Chain at ₹375 crore and Vedanta at ₹230.15 crore. Others contributed ₹4,032.15 crore. In all, the BJP netted ₹6,061 crore of the ₹8,252 crore between April 12, 2019 and January 11, 2024.
Read more: Electoral bonds: ‘Lottery king’ top donor for Opposition, BJP got most from this firm
The TMC received its biggest chunk of funds from Future Gaming at ₹542 crore, followed by Haldia Energy at ₹281 crore and Dhariwal Infrastructure at ₹90 crore. Others contributed ₹588.12 crore. In all, the TMC netted ₹1,610 crore of the ₹1,708 crore between April 12, 2019 and January 11, 2024.
For the Congress, the biggest donor was Vedanta at ₹125 crore, followed by Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited at ₹110 crore and MJK Enterprise at ₹91.6 crore. In all, the Congress netted ₹1,422 crore of the ₹1,952 crore between April 12, 2019 and January 11, 2024.
The data disclosure has gained additional importance given that it was revealed just weeks ahead of general elections, where political funding is expected to be among the issues raised during the campaign.
The data solves the mystery of who anonymously donated ₹10 crore to the Samajwadi Party by post. Keventer Food Park Infra, a part of the Kolkata-based FMCG group Keventer, donated 10 ₹1 crore bonds to the SP. These bonds were bought on May 7, 2019 and redeemed by the party on May 10, 2019.
Read more: SBI submits all details of electoral bonds with unique numbers to Election Commission
But another mystery — of who handed over a sealed envelope with 10 ₹1 crore bonds to the Janata Dal (United) in its office on April 3, 2019 — still persists because the bonds were credited into JD(U)’s account on April 10, two days before the cut-off of April 12 .
Under the 2018 EB scheme — which was quashed by a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on February 15 because it completely anonymised contributions made to political parties — each electoral bond is imprinted with a unique number that can assist in tracking the issuance and redemption of bonds, and in tracing the bond back to the purchaser.
On March 18, the bench led by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud ordered SBI to disclose the unique serial number associated with each EB and all other information the bank possesses while supplying the ECI with data for public release.
On the day, the bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, noted that the February 15 judgment required SBI to disclose all information in its possession, which will include alphanumeric numbers and serial numbers, besides the date of purchase or redemption, the recipient’s or buyer’s name, and the denomination of EBs.
Read more: Fresh details offer peek at donor details of 11 parties
It called for a categorical affidavit of the SBI chairman by 5pm on March 21 that the bank has disclosed all the information in its custody and that no details have been withheld. The court further directed that as soon as ECI receives the information from SBI, it will post it on its website “forthwith”.
Complying with this direction, the SBI chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara filed his affidavit on Thursday afternoon, stating that “SBI has now disclosed all details and that no details (other than complete bank account numbers and KYC Details) have been withheld from disclosure.”
Details of purchaser furnished to ECI on Thursday include EB’s serial number and URN number, bond number, journal date, date of purchase, date of expiry, prefix, name of the purchaser, denomination, issue branch code, issue teller and status.
The information about redemption by political parties, the affidavit said, includes EB serial number, date of encashment, name of the political party, last four digits of the account number, prefix, bond number, denomination, pay branch code and pay teller.
The bank clarified that prefix and bond number are the alphanumeric number, adding that the complete bank account numbers and KYC details of political parties are not being made public as it may compromise the security of the account. “Similarly, KYC details of the purchasers are also not made public. However, they are not necessary for identifying the political parties,” the affidavit stated.
SBI maintained that it was now revealing information which will show the name of the EB purchaser, denomination and specific number of the bond, name of the party that has encashed the bond, last four digits of the bank account number of political parties and denomination and number of the bond redeemed.
EBs, which were bearer banking instruments that did not carry the name of the buyer or payee, used to go for sale in 10-day windows in the beginning of every quarter— in January, April, July and October — besides an additional 30-day period specified by the central government during the Lok Sabha election years.
Introduced in 2018, EBs were available for purchase at any SBI branch in multiples of ₹1,000, ₹10,000, ₹1 lakh, ₹10 lakh and ₹1 crore and could be bought through a KYC-compliant account. There was no limit on the number of electoral bonds that a person or company could purchase. Donations made under this scheme by corporate and even foreign entities through Indian subsidiaries enjoyed 100% tax exemption while identities of the donors were kept confidential both by the bank as well as the recipient political parties.
But on February 15, a five-judge Constitution bench struck down the scheme, declaring it to be “unconstitutional” because it completely anonymised contributions made to political parties, and added that restricting black money or illegal election financing – some of the articulated objectives of the scheme – did not justify violating voters’ right to information in a disproportionate manner.
The bench directed SBI – the only designated EB-issuing bank – to stop the issuance of EBs, adding that the bank should submit details of EBs purchased since April 12, 2019, till that date to the poll watchdog by March 6. By March 13, the judgment ordered all funding received by political parties – since the court issued an interim direction to parties to submit such information with ECI – to be made public on ECI’s website.
On March 4, SBI told the top court it needed till June to break down the details of 22,217 EBs. But the apex court rejected the plea on March 11 and gave the bank one day.