NEW DELHI: Prudent Electoral Trust, the leading contributor to political parties through the ‘electoral trust’ route, was flooded with corporate donations following the scrapping of the electoral bonds scheme by the Supreme Court on Feb 15, 2024: three-fourths of its Rs 1075.7 crore donations in 2023-24 came between Feb 16 and March 31, 2024.
According to Prudent’s contribution report for the last fiscal, now uploaded on the Election Commission website, donations received by it for distribution to political parties nearly tripled to Rs 1075.7 crore from Rs 363 crore in 2022-23. While it is not unusual for political donations to rise ahead of general elections, what is interesting is that while contributions of Rs 278.6 crore came in between April 1, 2023 and Feb 15, 2024, the period between Feb 16, 2024 and March 31, 2024, saw these surge to Rs 797.1 crore.
Top trust gave lion’s share to BJP
Prudent’s corporate donors surged to 83 in 2023-24 from 22 in previous financial year
This, in all probability, points to a diversion of corporate donations to the electoral trusts route from the bonds route, closed after Supreme Court clampdown.
The number of Prudent’s corporate donors too surged to 83 in 2023-24 from around 22 in the previous financial year. Among the key corporates which contributed to Prudent in 2023-24 were Arcelor group and DLF Ltd (Rs 100 crore each); Maatha Projects LLP (Rs 75 crore); Maruti Suzuki and CESC Ltd (Rs 60 crore each); Hetero Group (Rs 55 crore); TVS Group and Apollo Tyres (Rs 50 crore each); Cipla (Rs 35.2 crore); and GMR group (Rs 26 crore). Megha Engineering and Infrastructure, the second biggest bond buyer, also contributed Rs 25 crore to Prudent, though this was well before the bonds were scrapped.
Unlike the anonymity offered by poll bonds, electoral trusts are required to declare each individual contribution received along with the name of the donor. Also, it must declare each contribution disbursed to the political parties while also naming the party. What is, however, not revealed here is which corporate contributed how much to an individual party.
As per contribution reports of various electoral trusts for 2023-24 now available on EC website, only four trusts have declared contributions — Prudent (Rs 1,075.7 crore), Triumph Electoral Trust (Rs 132.5 crore), Jaybharath Electoral Trust (Rs 9 crore), Paribartan Electoral Trust (Rs 1 crore) and Einzigartig Electoral Trust (Rs 17.2 lakh).
The Rs 1075.7 crore contributions received by Prudent were distributed among six parties, with BJP receiving the lion’s share at Rs 723.8 crore, Congress Rs 156.4 crore, BRS Rs 85 crore, YSR Congress party Rs 72.5 crore, TDP Rs 33 crore and Janasena Party Rs 5 crore. Triumph contributed Rs 127.5 crore to BJP and Rs 5 crore to DMK. Jaybharath trust donated Rs 5 crore to BJP, Rs 3 crore to DMK and Rs 1 crore to AIADMK. The entire Einzigartig kitty went to BJP. Interestingly, Paribartan did not identify its donors saying that its Rs 1 crore donation in 2023-24 was through the electoral bonds route.
Among the key donors to Triumph in 2023-24 were Cholamandalam Investments (Rs 50 crore), CG Power (Rs 30 crore), Coromandel International Ltd (Rs 25.5 crore), Tube Investments (Rs 25 crore) and EID Parry (Rs 2 crore). Jaybharath received its donations from Lakshmi Machine Works (Rs 8 crore) and Super Sales India (Rs 1 crore).
