“Vedanta got the Radhikapur West private coal mine on 3rd March 2021, and then in April 2021, they donated Rs.25 crore in Electoral Bonds,” he alleged.”Megha Engineering & Infra got the Rs.4,500 crore Zojila tunnel project in August 2020, then donated Rs.20 crore in Electoral Bonds in October 2020,” Ramesh said.He also claimed that Megha got the BKC bullet train station contract in December 2022, and donated Rs.56 crore the same month.Ramesh alleged that data also shows there has been money laundering through shell companies.”One huge issue with the electoral bonds scheme is that it removed the restriction that only a small percentage of a company’s profits could be donated, paving the way for shell companies to donate black money. There are many such suspicious cases, such as the Rs. 410 crore that has been donated by Qwik Supply Chain Limited, a company whose entire share capital is just Rs.130 crores according to MoCA filings,” he said.The Congress leader said another major issue is missing data.The data provided by SBI only begins in April 2019, but SBI sold the first tranche of bonds in March 2018.”A total of Rs.2,500 crores in bonds are missing from this data. Where is the data of these missing bonds, from March 2018 to April 2019? For instance, in the very first tranche of bonds, the BJP bagged 95% of the funds. Who is the BJP trying to protect?” he said.”As the analysis of the electoral bonds data continues, many more such cases of the BJP’s corruption will become clear. We also continue to demand unique bond ID numbers, so that we can precisely match donors to recipients,” Ramesh said.Ramesh also alleged that the data points to kickbacks as a pattern emerges where immediately after receiving some handouts from the Central government, companies have repaid the favour through electoral bonds.From steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal to billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Airtel, Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, and a lesser-known Future Gaming and Hotel Services were among the prominent buyers of the now-scrapped electoral bonds for making political donations.Following a Supreme Court directive, the State Bank of India (SBI), which was the authorised seller of electoral bonds, shared the data with the poll panel on March 12.The top court had given the Election Commission time till 5 pm on March 15 to upload the data on its website.The SBI said a total of 22,217 electoral bonds of varying denominations were purchased by donors between April 1, 2019, and February 15 this year, out of which 22,030 were redeemed by political parties.
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