Note: This article was originally published on March 15, 2025 and updated and republished on March 22, 2024 based on new data released by the Election Commission of India.
New Delhi: Hyderabad-based Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd has bought electoral bonds worth Rs 55 crore – and every single one was redeemed by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd defines itself as “the flagship company of the Navayuga Group, is an engineering and core infrastructure company that has carved a formidable position for itself in the industry.”
It is the same engineering company that was most recently in the news when the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel collapsed in Uttarakhand, trapping 41 labourers for 16 days, till they were pulled out manually by rat-miners. The Silkyara tunnel is part of the Modi government’s Char Dham all-weather accessibility project.
In mid-2020, Navayuga was also granted the government’s ambitious Rishikesh-Karnaprayag rail link project. It is responsible for many large and prestigious projects, including bridges over the Ganga, the Quazigund to Banihal Highway project to ensure all-weather connectivity to north Kashmir through Pir Panjal Pass, as per its website. It has also built the Dhola-Sadia Bridge, over the Brahmaputra river, which Prime Minister Modi inaugurated in 2017.
It was also among those responsible for work on the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway, whose first phase of the expressway was inaugurated by Modi in December 2022.
IT raid in October 2018 and change of regime trouble
On October 26, 2018, a 20-member team of income tax officials from New Delhi raided Navayuga. It was accused of violating income tax rules and money laundering .
Six months on, the company bought electoral bonds worth Rs 30 crore on April 18, 2019. The BJP redeemed all of these bonds.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with C. Visweswara Rao, Chairman and C. Sridhar, Managing Director of Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd. Photo: Company website
In 2019, there was a change of government in Andhra Pradesh. On October 22 of that year, it was reported that the company faced at least “three setbacks” after the change of government from the Telugu Desam Party. This included a setback to the large Polavaram Dam project.
Navayuga had got the contract in 2017 when TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu was the chief minister. But after Jagan Reddy came to power, Navayuga was taken off the project, a decision upheld by the Andhra Pradesh high court on October 22, 2019.
On October 10, 2019, incidentally, Navayuga bought electoral bonds worth Rs 15 crore. These too all went to the BJP.
News reports have been saying that the Adani group had been eyeing the Krishnapatnam Port Company in Andhra Pradesh for several years, which had gone to a company of the Navayuga group, when the TDP was in power in the state. But things changed over time. Adani tried its luck once more, and successfully acquired it in 2021.
On October 10, 2022, Navayuga bought another Rs 10 crore worth of bonds. Again, the bonds went to the BJP.
Recently, the rat-miners garnered praise for their herculean efforts to rescue workers. However, the leader of the group, Vakeel Hassan, had his home in New Delhi razed by a bulldozer for being built in an unauthorised manner.
(With inputs from Seema Chishti and Jahnavi Sen)
