India’s election commission has published details of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of political donations, exposing how much prime minister Narendra Modi’s party benefited from a controversial financing scheme.
According to the data that was released, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) received more than 60bn rupees (£570m) in donations through a scheme known as electoral bonds, which the Modi government introduced in 2017.
Last month, the supreme court struck down electoral bonds as unconstitutional, stating that they could lead to a “quid pro quo” arrangement between donors and political parties. The judges ruled that the State Bank of India (SBI) must make public the details of the donors who had bought the bonds.
Electoral bonds faced fierce criticism over their lack of transparency as they allowed corporations and individuals to make anonymous donations to political parties by buying certificates from the SBI.
The data, going back to 2019, confirmed the immense scale of the BJP’s financial advantage over other parties just as the country heads into an election, likely to be held next month, in which Modi and his BJP government are widely expected to win a third term in power.
The amount donated to the BJP was far higher than that given to any other political party, accounting for more than 54% of all bonds. The main national opposition party, Indian National Congress, received just 14bn rupees through the same scheme.
The supreme court verdict was seen as a blow to the BJP, which was widely known to have reaped huge benefits from electoral bonds.
The details of the bonds released on Thursday revealed that several of the biggest bond donors are under investigation by India’s tax authorities.
The lottery company Future Gaming and Hotel Services, which has been under investigation for money laundering since 2019, emerged as one of the biggest buyers of bonds. The second largest electoral bonds donor, Megha Engineering, is also under investigation by the authorities, as is the Vedanta Group, which emerged as the fifth largest buyer.
However, the data release still does not map electoral bond buyers to recipients, leaving it unclear which individual and corporate donors were funding which parties.
