Lottery company tops list of political funders in India
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was the largest beneficiary of these bonds, which were donations, garnering 55% of the bonds worth 120 billion rupees donated through a now-scrapped political funding system called "electoral bonds"
A lottery company, Future Gaming and Hotel Services has become the biggest donor to political parties in India, giving 13.68 billion rupees over the last five years.
This information comes from the Election Commission of India today (15 March), which released details about who has been funding political parties, following a Supreme Court order.
A list of the top 20 electoral bond buyers compiled by Reuters showed that Megha Engineering and Infrastructures, an engineering and construction firm based in the southern city of Hyderabad, came second at 9.66 billion rupees.
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It was followed by logistics firm Qwik Supply Chain, and natural resources giant Vedanta VDAN.NS and Haldia Energy.
Other big companies like Bharti Airtel, RPSG Group, and Essel Mining also donated a lot of money to political parties during this time.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was the largest beneficiary of these bonds, which were donations, garnering 55% of the bonds worth 120 billion rupees donated through a now-scrapped political funding system called "electoral bonds".
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government had launched the electoral bonds scheme in 2018.
While the government had claimed the scheme would make political funding more transparent, critics say it did the opposite instead and made the process more opaque.
The funding system was challenged by opposition lawmakers and a civil society group stating that "it hindered the public's right to know who had given money to political parties."
Last month, India's Supreme Court banned Electoral Bonds, calling them "unconstitutional".
Under the system, donors could purchase bonds from the State Bank of India in amounts between 1,000 and 10 million rupees ($12 to $121,000; £9 to £94,182) and then give them to political parties, who could cash them in.
The decision to scrap the funding system was seen as a setback for the BJP as well as other main political parties as it came ahead of the national election due to be held by May.
SBI told the Supreme Court on Wednesday that it had sold a total of 22,217 electoral bonds of various denominations of which 22,030 were cashed in by political parties between April 2019 and February 2024.
Reuters emailed the top 10 businesses on the list seeking comment but there was no immediate response from any outside business hours.
