Electoral Bonds: Infra, power, pharma companies among top corporate donors

Bengaluru: Some of India’s biggest corporates across sectors purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 50 crore and above, with companies from the infrastructure sector being the largest buyers, as per the lists submitted by the State Bank of India to the Election Commission, on directions of the Supreme Court.

An analysis of the data on the ECI website by DH shows that the biggest donors in the infrastructure and construction space accounted for Rs 2,272 crore by 12 companies. These included Megha Engineering (Rs 966 crore, the second largest donor overall), DLF Group (Rs 170 crore), Rashmi Cement (Rs 63.5 crore) and NCC Ltd (Rs 60 crore), among others.

The power and mining sector contributed the second biggest chunk of bond purchases over Rs 50 crore, with purchases from Haldia Energy (Rs 395 crore), Western UP Power Transco (Rs 220 crore), Dhariwal Infra and Torrent Power Ltd. From the mining space, Vedanta Ltd and Essel Mining bought bonds worth a combined Rs 624 crore.

In the gaming/lottery/gambling space, just one company, Future Gaming and Hotel Services Ltd, bought bonds worth a staggering Rs 1,368 crore, making it the largest buyer of bonds. In total, around 1,300 entities bought Rs 12,155 crore worth of bonds since the scheme’s inception in 2019.

Another big contributor was healthcare and pharma. The biggest donors included Yashoda Super Speciality Hospitals (Rs 162 crore), Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (Rs 80 crore), Natco Pharma (Rs 69.2 crore), Divi’s Laboratories (Rs 55 crore) and Aurobindo Pharma (Rs 52 crore).

In the telecom space, Bharti Airtel, through its subsidiaries bought Rs 247 crore worth of bonds while the biggest donors in the financial services sector included Prarambh Securities (Rs 78 crore) and Infina Finance (Rs 60 crore).

Among the individual donors, there are some well known titans of the corporate world as well. Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, Executive Chairman of ArcelorMittal, bought bonds worth Rs 35 crore, InterGlobe promoter Rahul Bhatia procured bonds worth Rs 20 crore, Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar Shaw made purchases worth Rs 6 crore, while Polycab Chairman Inder Thakurdas Jaisinghani bought bonds worth Rs 14 crore.

Incidentally, the third biggest donor overall, Qwik Supply Chain Pvt Ltd, which bought bonds worth Rs 410 crore, is said to have links with Reliance Industries. However, the conglomerate’s spokesperson told news agency PTI that Qwik Supply is not a subsidiary of any Reliance company.

Some well known corporate names also purchased bonds in lesser amounts. InterGlobe (which does business as Indigo) purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 36 crore and Bajaj Auto bought bonds worth Rs 18 crore, as per DH’s examination of the data.