Data released by the State Bank of India and published on the Election Commission of India (ECI) website showed that seven out of the top 20 electoral bond buyers are companies based in West Bengal.
As per the EC data, Haldia Energy Limited tops the list of the seven donors from the state, having donated Rs 377 crore from April 2019 to January of this year. The company comes under the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group.
Essel Mining & Inds Limited, an Aditya Birla Group company, is second on the list – with donations worth Rs 224 crore.
Interestingly, the next three companies on the list are registered on the same address in West Bengal. They include: Keventer Foodpark Infra (Rs 195 crore), MKJ Enterprise Ltd (Rs 192 crore), and Madanlal Ltd (Rs 185.5 crore).
The sixth and seventh companies on the list of top donors from the state are Avees Trading Finance Pvt Ltd and Dhariwal Infrastructure Limited, having donated Rs 113 crore and Rs 115 crore, respectively.
Several other well-known companies based in West Bengal that purchased electoral bonds include ITC Limited, Philips Carbon Black Limited, Ambuja Housing and Urban Infrastructure Company Limited, and Ambuja Realty Events Management Limited.
Companies That Faced Raids By Central Agencies
A number of West Bengal-based companies faced raids by central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation among others between 2019 and 2024.
Haldia Energy Limited – which made donations worth Rs 377 crore – faced action by the CBI in March 2020. In January 2020, two months before the raids, the company had made donations worth Rs 6 crore through bonds. Following the raids, the figure more than doubled to Rs 15 crore in October 2020 and further to Rs 20 crore in January 2021.
Similarly, an ED investigation was launched against one of the companies of the Keventer group in October 2019. Following the probe, four firms linked to the Keventer Group – Keventer Foodpark Infra Limited, MKJ Enterprises Ltd, Madanlal Ltd, and Sasmal Infrastructure Limited – donated a joint amount of Rs 616.5 crore through bonds.
It is not clear whether the beneficiaries of these donations were the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Trinamool Congress (TMC) or any other party.
However, it is significant to note that the TMC is the second highest recipient of electoral bond funds after the BJP, though there is a massive gap of over Rs 4000 crore between them.
TMC's Earnings Through Bonds Doubled Post 2021 Assembly Election Win
Further, data shows that the TMC saw a massive jump in political donations following its victory in the 2021 Assembly elections.
The TMC, which earned a total of Rs 1,609 crore in electoral bonds between 2019 and 2024, redeemed bonds worth Rs 55.4 crore in April 2021. However, three months after its victory in the Assembly elections —which were held in eight phases from 27 March to 29 April — the party redeemed electoral bonds worth 107.5 crore, which is almost double the contributions it received in the month of the election.
Collections through electoral bonds further rose to Rs 141.9 crore in October 2021 and Rs 224 crore in January 2022 before falling again in April 2022.
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