The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday made data on electoral bonds public shared by the State Bank of India (SBI). The data has been shared by the poll body in two parts on its website.
In compliance of Supreme Court's directions, the State Bank of India (SBI) provided the data pertaining to the electoral bonds to the poll body on March 12, 2024.
The top court had given the Election Commission time till 5 pm of March 15 to upload the data on its website.
The poll body has put the details on 'Disclosure of Electoral Bonds submitted by SBI' in two parts.
According to the data uploaded by the poll panel, the buyers of electoral bonds include Grasim Industries, Megha Engineering, Piramal Enterprises, Torrent Power, Bharti Airtel, DLF Commercial Developers, Vedanta Ltd., Apollo Tyres, Lakshmi Mittal, Edelweiss, PVR, Keventer, Sula Wine, Welspun, and Sun Pharma.
The parties that redeemed electoral bonds include the BJP, Congress, AIADMK, BRS, Shiv Sena, TDP, YSR Congress, DMK, JDS, NCP, Trinamool Congress, JDU, RJD, AAP, and the Samajwadi Party, according to the data.
The names include steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, Sunil Bharti Mittal's Airtel, Anil Agarwal's Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, a lesser-known Future Gaming and Hotel Services, and Megha Engineering.
Future Gaming, which was probed by the Enforcement Directorate in March 2022, bought electoral bonds worth over Rs 1,350 crore under two different sets of companies.
Among the known corporates, Agarwal's Vedanta Ltd bought Rs 398 crore worth of bonds, while Sunil Mittal's three companies together purchased a total of Rs 246 crore worth of bonds.
Steel magnate Lakshmi Niwas Mittal bought Rs 35 crore worth of bonds in his individual capacity. Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering, which has bagged contracts of several large infrastructure projects, bought bonds worth Rs 966 crore.
While most of the bonds have been issued in the name of political parties, the donations made to the Congress and the Samajwadi Party were made in the name of 'President, All India Congress Committee' and 'Adyaksha Samajvadi Party'.
Part 1, which covers 337 pages, mentions the names of the companies and the amount of each Electoral Bond that these companies have purchased from the SBI. Part 2, which runs into 426 pages, contains the names of the political parties that have received the bonds and the date of encashment of each bond.
In a landmark verdict delivered on February 15, a five-judge Constitution bench had scrapped the Centre's electoral bonds scheme that allowed anonymous political funding, calling it "unconstitutional" and ordered disclosure by the EC of donors, the amount donated by them and the recipients. Below are the details of the electoral bonds data made public by the election commission on its website.
With inputs from PTI
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