Election Commission of India.
Credit: DH Photo
New Delhi/Bengaluru: 'Lottery King' Santiago Martin's Future Gaming and Hotel Services donated more than one-third of the electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore to DMK and became the MK Stalin-led party's highest bond donor, according to data released by the Election Commission, which also showed the BJP bagged the highest Rs 6,987.38 crore through the financial mode.
The donations made by the Future Gaming promoted by Martin, who has been under the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) and other agencies scanner for the past few years, accounted for around 77 per cent or Rs 509 crore of Rs 656.5 crore disclosed by the DMK. Except for a handful of parties like DMK, AIADMK and JD(S), most parties did not disclose the names of their donors.
AIADMK, which got around Rs 6 crore, got funds from IPL team Chennai Super Kings, while JD(S), which got Rs 89.75 crore, had Megha Engineering and Constructions Pvt Ltd, Biocon, Infosys, Shankaranarayana Constructions and Embassy Group among its donors.
A number of parties like CPI(M), CPI, BSP, Forward Bloc, AIMIM, AIUDF, MNS, Muslim League and INLD declared that they had not received any donation through electoral bonds.
As the parties like BJP and Congress did not divulge the identity of their donors, it was not immediately known the other recipients of donations through electoral bonds from Martin's company. The details pertained to bonds redeemed since its inception and September 2023 and were disclosed by the Election Commission on the Supreme Court's orders.
Earlier, the EC had published the data submitted by the SBI pertaining to a period from April 12, 2019 till the scrapping of the bonds by the apex court. The latest is based on the declarations given by various parties in November last year on the bonds redeemed by them since the scheme was launched in early 2018. This excludes data on bonds sold between October last year and February 15 when the Supreme Court scrapped electoral bonds.
The BJP was the biggest beneficiary of the electoral bonds and it got Rs 421.27 crore between April and September 2023. It got the highest of Rs 2,555 crore in 2019-20. Collating the two data sets, BJP has received close to Rs 7,800 crore during the entire duration of the scheme.
Interestingly, Trinamool Congress got the second highest donations through electoral bonds at Rs 1,396.94 crore. An analysis of the data showed that Trinamool's receipt from the bonds leapfrogged in 2021-22, the fiscal in which West Bengal went to polls. In 2022-23, the party received Rs 325 crore between April and September 2023.
Congress was ranked third in bond redemption as it got Rs 1,334.36 crore. It was behind Trinamool in collecting bonds in this fiscal too as it got only Rs 211 crore between April and September 2023.
K Chandrasekhar Rao-led BRS was a close fourth with Rs 1,322 crore, followed by Naveen Patnaik's BJD at Rs 944.5 crore, DMK at Rs 656.5 crore and YSR Congress at Rs 442.8 crore. Of the Rs 1,322 crore, BRS got Rs 377.92 crore just before last year's Telangana's Assembly election.
BJD too echoed Trinamool's trend as donations through electoral bonds started climbing up from 2021-22. However, it was not linked to polls as Odisha had Assembly elections in 2019.
Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP got Rs 70.79 crore, according to the EC data set. While from 2018-19 to 2021-22 fiscals, the party got bonds in a range of Rs 55.1 lakh to Rs 5.5 crore, it shot up to Rs 45.55 crore in 202-23.
Samajwadi Party got Rs 14.05 crore and of this, Rs 3.21 crore came just before 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, while the rest were donated during Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
The other parties which received donations through electoral bonds included TDP (Rs 181.35 crore), Shiv Sena (Rs 60.4 crore), RJD (Rs 56 crore), NCP (Rs 50.51 crore), Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (Rs 15.5 crore), Akali Dal (Rs 7.26 crore), National Conference (Rs 50 lakh) from the Bharti Group and Sikkim Democratic Front (Rs 50 lakh).