5 highest donors to BJP through electoral bonds
As per the orders of the Supreme Court, the Election Commission of India has released the details of the amounts donated by companies to all the political parties, as political funding, through electoral bonds. The data came from the State Bank of India (SBI), which was the sole seller of electoral bonds and which was ordered to furnish the data by the apex court after the declared the electoral binds scheme illegal in a landmark judgment.
Scroll.in has put together a list of the five highest donors to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling party at the Centre and, which was, by far, the highest receiver of funds through the electoral bonds scheme.
Data has been made available for the period from between April 2019 and January 2024, as per the court’s orders, during which period the party redeemed Rs 6,060 crore worth bonds.
Altogether, the party received Rs 8,251.8 crore in electoral bonds since March 2018, out of the total bonds sold worth about Rs 16,518 crore. This means the BJP redeemed just short of 50 per cent of all bonds sold.
Data is not available for the bonds worth over Rs 4,000 crore that were redeemed between March 1, 2018 (when the scheme started) and April 12, 2019.
As per the data made available by the SBI, the top five donors through electoral bonds to the BJP are:
- Megha group: Rs 664 crore
- Reliance-linked firms: Rs 545 crore (of which Qwik Supply Chain Private Limited donated Rs 375 crore)
- Keventers Group: Rs 351.92 crore
- Aditya Birla Group: Rs 285 crore
- Bharti Airtel Group: Rs 236.4 crore
- Vedanta: Rs 230.15 crore
