Election Commission meeting with agencies (Image credit X Election Commission)
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, March 14: The Election Commission on Thursday uploaded the full details of the electoral bonds on its website as per the directions of the Supreme Court of India. The details have been uploaded in two sets on the ECI portal, and there are no linkages visible to relate the donors with any political party.
The first set of the data set has dates, buyers of the bonds, and denominations. The second data set has the names of the political parties, dates, and the denominations. Thus, one cannot come to the conclusion which political party encashed the electoral bonds bought by any specific entity.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as already known through details emerging out of the Right to Information Act (RTI) application, has been the largest beneficiary of the electoral bond scheme. The BJP is closely followed by the Congress and the All India Trinamool Congress. Even the Samajwadi Party is a beneficiary of the electoral bond scheme. With the beneficiaries well spread over the full political spectrum, there has been a complete silence from the political parties over the final uploading of the details by the ECI on Thursday.
Yet, there are some curious entities which figure prominently in the data sets uploaded by the ECI. Megha Engineering comes out as the second largest buyer of the electoral bonds, valued at Rs 980 crores. Future Gaming and Hotel Services is the top buyer of the electoral bonds, valued more than Rs 1300 crores. This firm is not widely known.
Vedanta, the mining major, along with Laksmi Mittal, the British billionaire of Indian origin, prominently figures in the data set uploaded by the ECI on the website. The likes of Sun Pharma and Grasim also are listed in the data set. Quik Supply Chain with a net buy of Rs 410 crores of electoral bond is also raising eyebrows. This firm is also not widely known. There are several pharma companies listed in the data set with timeline stoking speculations of the linkages with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
There are several entities whose antecedents are not widely known. Piramal Enterprises is also a prominent buyer of the electoral bonds. With two separate data sets uploaded by the ECI, it’s nearly not possible to link the beneficiary and the donors of the electoral bonds. The data sets leave a large scope for conjectures to the curious eyes.
It may also happen that the people may look into the details of the contract gains of the entities listed in the data sets to draw any meaning of the electoral bonds. There are a few individuals who have also been listed along with Mittal for buying the electoral bonds.
The Supreme Court had directed the SBI to submit the two separate data sets of the details of the electoral bonds after hearing a slew of petitions which had sought full disclosures while alleging that the scheme is an indirect bribery. The Supreme Court has held the electoral bond scheme unconstitutional. The scheme was brought by the Narendra Modi government in the first term with an objective that the initiative would clean up the electoral funding.
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