New Delhi: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which secured approximately half of all electoral bonds, received the highest contribution from a Telangana-based infrastructure company, Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL).
In total, BJP encashed electoral bonds worth Rs 6,060.5 crore between April 12, 2019 and January 24, 2024, as revealed by the data released by the Election Commission following orders from the Supreme Court to the State Bank of India. However, the total amount redeemed by the party since March 2018 is Rs 8,251.8 crore.
By a significant margin, the BJP’s largest donor was Megha Engineering, based in Hyderabad, which contributed Rs 584 crore – out of the firm’s total bond purchases amounting to Rs 966 crore – between 2019 and 2023. The company now owns a major stake in the TV9 network. Another MEIL company Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited gave an additional Rs 80 crore.
At second place is QwikSupply, which is allegedly linked to the Reliance Group, at Rs 375 crore. The second highest donor for BJP were companies linked to Kolkata-based industrialist M.K. Jalan. In total, Madanlal Limited, Keventers Foodpark, MKJ enterprises and Sasmal gave Rs 339.42 crore to BJP.
There were no matching records for bond numbers which amounted to Rs 466.31 crore encashed by BJP among the data revealed on March 21.
As per the numbers shared with EC, the BJP encashed Rs 1,505.4 crores in 2019, when India went for general elections in April and May.
Also read: Who Were the Top Buyers of Electoral Bonds Paying?
In 2019, the largest three donations through electoral bonds to BJP were as follows: Madanlal Limited contributed Rs 175.5 crore, Keventer Foodpark Infra Limited contributed Rs 144.5 crore, and Megha Engineering contributed Rs 125 crore.
Since both Keventer and Madanlal Limited are linked to the same group, the two Jalan companies issued bonds worth Rs 320 crore in May 2019. Additionally, in October of the same year, another family-owned firm, MKJ, contributed an additional Rs 14.42 crore to the BJP.
The redemption of bonds by the ruling party experienced a significant drop to just Rs 73.89 crore in 2020. The top three donors for the BJP during that year, each contributing Rs 10 crore, were Apco Infratech Pvt Limited, Infina Finance, and an individual named Raju Kumar Sharma.
In 2021, incoming funds saw a substantial increase to Rs 372 crore as political activities resumed to pre-pandemic levels. The top three redemptions by the BJP were from Future Gaming, a lottery group, at Rs 50 crore, followed by Haldia Energy at Rs 35 crore, and Megha Engineering at Rs 33 crore.
The highest amount of bonds were redeemed in 2022 when assembly elections were held in the states of Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Gujarat. According to the newly disclosed data , the BJP encashed Rs 1763.54 crore in 2022, which was the highest amount for any year.
The BJP’s top electoral bond donor in 2022, QwikSupply, contributed Rs 325 crore in two instalments, one in January and the other in November.
The other top donors for BJP through electoral bonds in 2022 were Vedanta (Rs 176.5 crore) and Megha Engineering (Rs 129 crore).
In 2023, Megha Engineering upped its donation to BJP to Rs 297 crore, bringing it to the top of the list for that year. It was followed by Bharti Airtel at a distant second at Rs 93 crore, followed by Western UP Power Transmission, the MEIL group firm, at Rs 80 crore. It had been yet another bumper year in electoral bonds for BJP which redeemed Rs 1676.3 crores.
Even this year, BJP encashed Rs 202 crore, out of which Bharati Airtel gave Rs 50 crore, followed by Kolkata-based Rungta and Sons at Rs 50 crore too. Torrent Power was its third highest donor at Rs 25 crore. It had already encashed Rs 202 crore in electoral bonds before the Supreme Court deemed the whole process unconstitutional.
