New Delhi: The principal opposition party, Congress, received more than half of its total donations under the electoral bonds scheme in one year – 2023.
The biggest donors for the party were the Kolkata-based M.K. Jalan group of companies and the mining giant Vedanta.
From 2019 to 2024, the Congress party redeemed Rs 1,421.86 crore, representing about 11.14% of the total funding of all political parties through electoral bonds, as per the data released by the State Bank of India. These figures position Congress in third place, behind the Bharatiya Janata Party which redeemed Rs 8,251.8 crore and the Trinamool Congress, which redeemed Rs 1,609.53 crore of electoral bonds.
However, if we are to consider the period since the inception of the electoral bond scheme in March 2018, then Congress has received a total of Rs 1,952 crore. This places Congress in second place, surpassing Trinamool’s total tally of Rs 1,705 crore.
Examining the data released on March 22, the top single firm donor for Congress is Vedanta (Rs 125 crore), followed by the Megha Engineering firm Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited (Rs 110 crore) and MKJ enterprises (Rs 69.35 crore).
In terms of conglomerates, the four Kolkata-based companies linked to industrialist M.K. Jalan contributed a total of Rs 138.55 crore.
Another significant donor was Yashoda Super Speciality Hospital, which contributed Rs 64 crore. This hospital had also donated Rs 94 crore to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi. Additionally, the lottery group Future Gaming contributed Rs 50 crore through electoral bonds.
There are no names of companies listed for the Rs 70.77-crore encashed by Congress in 2019, when the country went to general elections in the first half.
During the last parliamentary election year, the largest amount was given to Congress by Keventer Foodpark at Rs 20 crore, followed by Rs 10 crore by Madanlal Limited. Another Rs 8 crore was given by Bharati Infratel. Overall, the amount the Congress received through electoral bonds in 2019 was Rs 99.54 crore.
The tally slumped to Rs 9 crore in 2020, when the country went into the COVID-19 lockdown. The bulk of it, Rs 4 crore, came from Shree Cements limited, founded in Rajasthan and headquartered in Kolkata. Another Rs 3 crore was given by the Jaipur-based Genus Power Infrastructure Limited.
In post-pandemic 2021, Congress got Rs 123.92 crore. The top three donors were Vedanta Limited at Rs 25 crore, followed by RP-the Sanjiv Goenka Group’s Haldia Energy Limited (Rs 15 crore) and Yashoda Super Speciality Hospital (Rs 10 crore).
For the second consecutive year, Vedanta Limited was again Congress’s largest donor with Rs 51 crore, with MKJ enterprises at Rs 29.5 crore and Inorbit Mall at Rs 20 crore. Overall, the tally in 2022 for Congress rose to Rs 289.36 crore.
The best year for Congress in terms of encashment seems to have been 2023, when it received Rs 793 crore, out of which Rs 110 crore was from Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited, following by Rs 54 crore from MKJ enterprises and Rs 53 crore from Avees Trading Finance Limited.
This year, Congress has redeemed far less. According to the data, the party encashed only Rs 35 crore in 2024, before the Supreme Court stopped the issue of new bonds. Out of this, the MKJ group’s Sasmal Infrastructure has given Rs 9 crore, with Rs 5 crores each from Hyderabad-based GVPR Engineers Private Limited and a Odisha-based stock broking firm, Vedika Vanijya Private Limited.
