Snigdhendu Bhattacharya 
Kolkata: Chennai-based Future Gaming And Hotel Services and RP Sanjiv Goenka group of companies donated Rs 542 crore and Rs 464 crore, respectively, to the Trinamool Congress, making up 59% of the party’s total donations of Rs 1,705 crore through electoral bonds, show latest data released by the Election Commission of India.
On Thursday evening, March 21, the ECI published a new dataset on its website containing alphanumeric numbers that help match the purchasers of electoral bonds with the political parties that received the funds.
Santiago Martin’s company, Future Gaming And Hotel Services, purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore, and emerged as the top donor to political parties.
The ECI data shows those firms that faced central agency probes have donated mostly to opposition parties and gave more money to West Bengal’s ruling party than the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the ruling party in Martin’s home state.
Future Gaming And Hotel Services is the sole franchise owner of ‘Dear Lottery’ in West Bengal. It is the most popular lottery in the state and has in the past run into multiple controversies.
The Comptroller and Audit General of India’s 2017 report flagged serious irregularities by the company. In 2019, the Enforcement Directorate launched a money laundering investigation against Martin.
Over the past couple of years, at least three TMC leaders have won Rs 1 crore in these lotteries. Opposition parties had called the results rigged and accused ruling party leaders of encouraging lottery addiction. Anubrata Mandal, the jailed Birbhum district chief of TMC, had his family alone winning lotteries thrice, prompting the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe Mandal’s lottery luck.
While the TMC’s main electoral funding came from a company headquartered outside, the state’s biggest political funder favoured the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Four firms, part of the Kolkata-based M.K. Jalan group of companies, which include Keventers, have emerged as the third biggest political donor in the country with Rs 616.9 crore spending, next only to Future Gaming And Hotel Services and Telangana-based Megha Engineering (Rs 966 crore).
The Jalans are followed by the Kolkata-based RP Sanjiv Goenka group, the fourth-highest spender in the country, having donated bonds worth Rs 609 crore.
Also read: Chart: The Top 50 Purchasers of Electoral Bonds by Promoter/Group
Funding pattern
Data shows the two biggest political donors from Bengal – the M.K. Jalan group and RP Sanjiv Goenka group – took distinctly different funding trajectories.
Jalan’s funding overwhelmingly favoured the BJP, with Rs 351.9 crore or 57% of its donation, followed by Rs 160.5 crore to the Congress and Rs 84.4 crore to the TMC. The largest portion was allocated to the BJP during the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Goenka heavily favoured the TMC, giving the state’s ruling party 76% of its total spending on electoral bonds.
There was another difference in their funding pattern.
The Jalans’ largest expenditure incurred during the Lok Sabha election in April-May 2019.
Of the Rs 390.5 crore, the company gave Rs 325 crore to the BJP, Rs 31 crore to the TMC, Rs 24 crore to the Congress, Rs 10 crore to the Samajwadi Party and Rs 50 lakh to the Shiromani Akali Dal.
The Goenkas gave Rs 15 crore to the BJP and Rs 5 crore to the TMC during the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
In April 2021, during the state assembly elections, the company gave Rs 41 crore to the BJP and Rs 36 crore to the TMC. However, after Mamata Banerjee’s return to power, funds flew into the TMC’s accounts in rather large sums.
The Jalan group’s funding to the Congress is interesting.
Note that Congress leader in the Lok Sabha and state unit president, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, had in 2018 filed a case in the Calcutta high court alleging irregularities in the state government’s share of Metro Dairy to the Jalan group.
According to the Telegraph, it was alleged that there was lack of transparency in the Bengal government’s sale of its 47% stake in Metro Dairy to Keventer Agro Ltd in 2017.
In 2022, the high court dismissed these allegations, and the Supreme Court upheld the verdict the same year.
Other donors
Outside of these three firms, the TMC also got substantial donations from several other companies – Rs 45.5 crore from Avees Trading Finance Pvt Ltd, Rs 42 crore from IFB Agro, Rs 40 crore from Chennai Green Woods Pvt Ltd, and Rs 38 crore Prarambh Securities Pvt Ltd.
Other major donations to the TMC include Rs 21 crore from Transways Exim Private Limited, Rs 18.5 crore from Rashmi Cement Ltd, Rs. 15.4 crore from Westwell Gases Pvt Ltd, Rs. 15 crore from Misrilall Mines, Rs 15 crore from WPIL and Rs 12.8 crore from Himalayan Endeavour Pvt Ltd.
Among them, Chennai Green Woods Pvt Ltd is based in Hyderabad and Prarambh Securities Pvt Ltd has its registered office in Gujarat and corporate office in Maharashtra. The rest of the companies are headquartered in Bengal.
Of these companies, Avees has also given Rs 53 crore to the Congress, IFB gave Rs 35 crore to Bihar’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, Rashmi Cement gave Rs 72 crore to Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal and WPIL gave Rs 15 crore to the BJP.
Other donors of the party include Sengupta And Sengupta Pvt Ltd (Rs. 8.2 crore), Sandeep Auto Lines (7 crore), Tivoli Park Apartments Pvt Ltd (7 crore), Kamna Credits And Promoters Pvt Ltd (6 crore), Askus Logistics Pvt Ltd (5 crore), Asish Finance Pvt Ltd (5 crore), Herald Beverages Pvt Ltd (Rs 5.5 crore), ITC Ltd (Rs 4.9 crore), KVR Baseline Resources Pvt Ltd (Rs 4 crore), Kejriwal Miiniing Pvt Ltd (Rs 4 crore), Madhya Pradesh Waste Management Pvt Ltd (Rs 6 crore) and Salasar Stock Broking Ltd-Proprietary (Rs 5 crore).
The party, which has been ruling Bengal since 2011, has emerged as the third-highest recipient of political donations through electoral bonds. Its earning of Rs 1,705 crore from electoral bonds comes next only to the BJP and Congress.
While the party’s Rajya Sabha members like Saket Gokhale and Jawhar Sircar have repeatedly used social media to target the BJP over alleged misuse of the Electoral Bonds Scheme, none of the party’s senior leaders in West Bengal have commented in the past five weeks since the scrapping of the scheme.
Reacting to the revelations, CPI(M) state secretary Md. Salim said last week that the data made it evident that the “corporates conspired against the Leftists to ensure there are no Left MPs from Bengal.”
He alleged that “corporates funded the two pro-corporate parties” to create a political binary around the TMC and the BJP “so that they can loot and share the spoils in perfect understanding.”
The CPI(M) did not accept any donation through electoral bonds and was one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court against the Electoral Bonds Scheme. The party has no Lok Sabha MP in the state since 2019 and no MLA since 2021, as its vote share nosedived. Currently, the party is trying to highlight the massive corporate funding from Bengal corporates to these two parties to regain lost ground.
They are set to contest the election in alliance with the Congress in West Bengal, even as the party will fight the Congress in Kerala, which the CPI(M) rules.