New Delhi/Mumbai: Future Gaming and Hotel Services and Megha Engineering Infrastructure Limited are the top purchasers of electoral bonds from April 2019 to January 2024, having purchased bonds worth Rs 1,368 and Rs 980 crores, respectively, according to data uploaded by the Election Commission of India on its website. Both have both been under the lens of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Income Tax department, respectively.
On Thursday (March 14), the Election Commission uploaded data on electoral bonds purchased and encashed since 2019 onto its website, a day before its Supreme Court-ordered deadline. The data was released after the Supreme Court, earlier this week, asked the State Bank of India (SBI) to furnish all details of those who had purchased and those who had encashed anonymous electoral bonds since 2019. It had also asked the Election Commission to publish the data on its website by March 15.
The data, uploaded by the Election Commission, includes two documents – one a datewise list of purchases by companies, and the other a datewise list of deposits by political parties that have encashed them.
Future Gaming: Under the ED’s lens
Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR has donated Rs 1,368 crore between October 21, 2020 and January 9, 2024, all in denominations of Rs 1 crore.
Coimbatore-based Future Gaming is one of India’s biggest lottery companies and its founder Santiago Martin, styles himself as the “lottery king.”
On July 23, 2019, the ED attached assets worth Rs 120 crore in an alleged money laundering scam, where he was accused of inflating prize money and amassing property from unaccounted cash, the Times of India reported.
The report also said that a few months earlier, the ED had searched over 70 premises associated with him.
According to the data now made available by the Election Commission, the company proceeded to purchase electoral bonds after this action, with its first purchase being listed on October 21, 2019.
However, the company has remained under the lens of the ED, with the agency conducting searches in its premises in Tamil Nadu as recently as last week in connection with an alleged sand mining case, reported news agency Press Trust of India.
On April 2, 2022, it was reported that the ED had initiated a money laundering probe against the company and seized Rs 409.92 crore worth of its assets. Five days later, on April 7, 2022, according to the Election Commission’s data, the company bought around Rs 100 crore worth of bonds.
In July 2022, election watchdog Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) analysed the Contribution Reports of Electoral Trusts submitted to the Election Commission of India for FY 2020-21 and noted that the lottery company had donated Rs 100 crore to Prudent Electoral Trust, which has donated the highest amount to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“Why would raided companies ever go about making political contributions in the midst of raids, if not as protection money,” tweeted Arun Srikumar, a lawyer at Keystone Partners, adding that there was “zero bona fides in these contributions.”
Of the total number of electoral bonds worth Rs 12,008 crore sold between 2017-2018 and 2022-2023, the BJP received nearly 55%, or Rs 6,564 crore, of the total number of electoral bonds (around Rs 12,000 crore) sold from 2017-2018 to 2022-2023.
Megha Engineering Infrastructure Limited
Megha Engineering Infrastructure Limited, the second highest donor, has purchased Rs 980 crores between April 12, 2019 to October 12, 2023 of Rs 1 crore each.
Megha Engineering Infrastructure Limited, headquartered in Hyderabad, describes itself as “an emerging player in the global infrastructure scenario” on its website.
Owned by P.V. Krishna Reddy and P.P. Reddy, its interests include projects in the areas of irrigation, water management, power, hydrocarbons, transportation, buildings, and industrial infrastructure. The website also states that it has been a pioneer in PPP (public-private partnerships) with central and state governments and is currently executing projects in more than 18 states across the country.
A simple inteenet search of the company shows that it has bagged key projects like a crude oil project worth Rs 5,400 crore in Mongolia (the Mongol Refinery Project is a government to government initiative) in September, two separate packages to build the Thane-Borivali twin tunnel project in Mumbai for a total bid of Rs 14,400 crore in May and and a Rs 500-crore order from the Ministry of Defence for its company IComm in June.
It is also working on the Zojila tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir, according to its website, which also lists key projects like the Char Dham Rail Tunnel, six Laning of Vijayawada bypass, Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway, Maharashtra Samruddhi Mahamarg, Solapur – Kurnool – Chennai Economic Corridor, among others.
The group’s Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited, has also donated Rs 220 crores in electoral bonds-the seventh highest on the list published by the Election Commission on Thursday.
On October 12, 2019, the income tax department had conducted an “inspection” at the group’s offices in Hyderabad, according to a report in the Hindu BusinessLine.
In a statement, the company, however, denied that it was a raid or a search and called it “routine inspection.”
“The Income Tax Department has inspected our office on Friday. It is not a raid or search, but a routine inspection,” the company statement was quoted as saying by the outlet.
In January 2024, the Deccan Chronicle reported about a CAG audit report which made allegations against Megha for the work it had done in a major irrigation project in Telanganaa:
“High-profile Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) has allegedly pocketed thousands of crores of rupees of public money in the ill-famed Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS), thanks to the patronage it enjoyed from the previous Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government. According to the draft performance audit report on KLIS by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), the company was paid an excess of Rs.5,188.43 crore in just four packages, involving the supply and commissioning of pumps, motors and auxiliary equipment.”
A recent report by The News Minute and Newslaundry had also found that 30 firms that are facing ED and IT probes donated Rs 335 crore to the BJP in the last five years.
Chennai Greenwoods
This little known construction firm is in the. top 20 donors, having bought Rs 105 crore worth of electoral bonds. The firm is owned by the Andhra based Ramky group. In July 2021, Ramky was raided by the Income Tax authorities. “The IT officials found many incriminating documents and loose sheets and seized them. These indicated involvement of the group in unaccounted transactions,” the IT department said. Ramky, which was accused of having unaccounted income of Rs 300 crore, bought its first electoral bonds through Chennai Greenwoods in January 2022, making additional purchases in April 2022 and again in 2023.
Qwik Supply Chain Private Limited
This is a Mumbai-based company which bought electoral bonds worth Rs 410 crore.
According to the company information available on Zauba Corp, the company was founded 23 years ago in 2000. As per the data uploaded on the ECI’s website, Qwik Supply Chain, a firm linked to Reliance group, made its first purchase of bonds on January 5, 2022. The second batch of purchases continued five days later, on January 10. The purchase then followed on November 11, 2022 and a year later on November 17, 2023. All electoral bond purchases were made in the denomination of Rs 1 crore.
The company’s two present directors are Vipul Pranlal Mehta and Tapas Mitra. According to Zauba Corp, Tapas Mitra, is also the director of Reliance Oil and Petroleum, Reliance Eros Productions, Reliance Photo Films, Reliance Fire Brigades, Ral Investment Private Limited, Reliance First Private Limited, Reliance Polyester, among others.
Between 2021-2022, Mitra’s salary as a “whole-time director” of the company was Rs 46.1 lakh, along with additional perks worth Rs 3.53 lakh.
The company, according to details uploaded on Zauba Corp, shows that they have an office space in Dhobi Talao, in South Mumbai.
According to the company’s website, Quick Supply Chain Private Limited is engaged in business of providing logistics and other support services to its Customers.
The company’s returns and shareholder details for the financial year 2022-23 attributes major turnover (91.1%) to land transport, the remaining 8.3% came from providing support service to other organisations and a minuscule share was of wholesale trading.
Vedanta
Vedanta is the fourth largest buyer of electoral bonds. It was also in the news when the controversial method of the finance bill was used to introduce electoral bonds. It was around the same time that a money Bill, involving Vedanta, was deployed to amend the FCRA retrospectively.
The Modi government made crucial amendments to the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) to legalise Vedanta’s donations to both the BJP and the Congress. These amendments were enacted as a one-off, retrospective amendment to the FCRA, exempting the BJP and Congress from violating Section 3 of the Act. This section prohibits political parties, their office-bearers, and members of any House from receiving contributions from foreign companies or companies in India controlled by foreign firms.
Vedanta bought electoral bonds worth Rs 400.65. On January 10, 2022, it bought 73 bonds worth Rs 1 crore each. Livemint reported on January 14, 2022, that the Vedanta Group made a bid to buy Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) or BPCL, as it was “willing to spend $12 billion to acquire India’s state-owned refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp., an asset sale that’s among the nation’s biggest and which has faced delays in completion.”
Billionaire chairman Anil Agarwal was quoted as saying in an interview, “We’re not going to bid aggressively, but we will put the right price.”
“The market cap of the company is about $11 billion to $12 billion, so this is the amount of investment we’re looking at.”
Had this disinvestment gone through, it would have been one of the biggest privatisation exercises, but it was called off, as two of the three companies that had shown interest in acquiring the public sector undertaking withdrew their bids.
Agarwal told Moneycontrol on April 22 that the government has withdrawn the offer to sell its stake in BPCL and will come up with a new strategy. Next only to Indian Oil, BPCL is India’s second-largest oil marketing company.
Another interesting point was made by The Wire‘s founding editor M.K. Venu. “Interesting that Vedanta group donated bonds while it was under scrutiny by ED/CBI through 2019 to 2022. Around this time the group was also chosen for PM Modi’s ambitious semiconductor project in Gujarat for which the government proposed a massive grant of $5 billion. Project didn’t fructify,” he said.
Haldia Energy Limited
The fifth biggest donor through electoral bonds is Sanjeev Goenka’s Haldia Energy Limited that donated Rs 377 crore between October 1, 2019 and January 5, 2024. The Kolkata-based billionaire owns the RP-Sanjeev Goenka group that has businesses in sectors like power and energy, retail, IT, FMCG, media and entertainment, infrastructure, and education.
The Haldia Energy Limited also runs a coal-based thermal power plant in West Bengal’s port township Haldia and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation, a flagship company of the RP-Sanjeev Goenka group.
The company began purchasing electoral bonds on October 1, 2019 when it bought bonds worth Rs 1 crore. However, then the purchasing became more frequent each subsequent year, even as the donations kept increasing. The company bought bonds worth Rs 21 crore in 2020 in three tranches, and spent Rs 105 crore in 2021 in five tranches.
Similarly, it bought bonds worth Rs 85 crore in 2022, while in 2023 it spent Rs 115 crore in electoral bonds. Its last purchase was on January 5, 2024 when it bought bonds worth Rs 35 crore.
Haldia bought its first bond on May 7, 2019 of 24 electoral bonds worth Rs 14 crore (1 crore each) and 1 crore through ten bonds, each of Rs 10 lakh denomination.
Another company owned by Goenka, Dhariwal Infrastructure Ltd. bought Rs 115 crore worth of bonds.
Last year, West Bengal BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari had targeted Sanjeev Goenka for funding the Trinamool Congress through electoral bonds and other modes.
Goenka, who also owns the IPL team Lucknow Super Giants and Kolkata-based ISL football club Mohun Bagan Super Giant, has been expanding his businesses even in the north-eastern states where he had planned to invest in the renewable energy sector. His company officials had a meeting with the minister of state for development of the north-eastern region, B.L.Verma, in which they had expressed their interests in developing a few hydro-power projects in the north-eastern states.
The CESC has also been reported to have interests in solar power generation in Rajasthan and Gujarat where it was looking to acquire over 50,000 acres of land for its proposed projects.
In January, 2024, the CESC outbid companies like ACME Cleantech, Sembcorp, Greenko, Avaada, Reliance Industries, JSW Energy, and the Adani group to establish a 10,500-tonne per annum green hydrogen production facility. The tender was invited by the Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd.
Sanjeev Goenka’s CESC and RPG Enterprises has been under the CBI scanner since 2012 in a case related to corruption, cheating, and criminal conspiracy over the allocation of coal blocks in Deocha Pachami, Tara West, Mahan and South Dadhu during 1993-95.
Note: An earlier version of this article said the Vedanta group bought Rs 375.65 crore worth of electoral bonds. It in fact brought Rs 400.65 crore worth of bonds.
