New Delhi: Two corporations — one, a lottery agency probed and chargesheeted by the Enforcement Directorate in September 2023 and one other accused of misappropriating funds from a Telangana irrigation undertaking and raided by the Income Tax Department in October 2019 — emerged as the highest political donors between 12 April, 2019, to 11 January this yr, exhibits ThePrint’s evaluation of the info on the Electoral Bonds scheme uploaded by the Election Commission of India on its web site Thursday.
According to this knowledge, uploaded following the Supreme Court’s directive, the lottery agency, Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR, contributed Rs 1,368 crore by way of electoral bonds of Rs 1 crore denomination every, whereas Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd (MEIL) donated Rs 966 crore in an analogous format.
Electoral Bonds are interest-free devices that may be bought by corporations in denominations of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 1 lakh, Rs 10 lakh, and Rs 1 crore to fund political events. The companies purchase the bonds from branches of State Bank of India (SBI) after which political events redeem it to get the cash in response to the worth of a selected bond.
The scheme was launched as a part of the Finance Bill in 2017. The then finance minister Arun Jaitley had stated the scheme was introduced in to “cleanse the system of political funding in India”.
Over the previous few years, Opposition events and activists have taken nice offence over the anonymity issue concerned within the buy and redemption of the bonds by political events.
Last month, the Supreme Court additionally deemed the scheme “unconstitutional and manifestly arbitrary” and ordered SBI to cease additional issuance of the bonds.
It had additionally requested the financial institution to furnish all particulars associated to the bond buy and redemption by 6 March. The financial institution had moved the highest court docket looking for time until 30 June however was denied additional time and was requested to present all particulars to the ECI by 12 March.
The knowledge on electoral bonds was submitted to the ballot panel by SBI Tuesday, in keeping with the deadline set by the Supreme Court which had additionally directed the EC to make this knowledge public by 15 March.
Also Read: Future Gaming, Megha Engineering, Vedanta amongst high patrons of electoral bonds, exhibits SBI knowledge
Company chargesheeted by ED
Founded in 1991, Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR, previously Martin Lottery Agencies Limited, primarily based in Coimbatore is a number one lottery firm in India based by Santiago Martin.
Martin and his agency had been booked by the Cochin zonal workplace of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2011.
Based on the ultimate report by the CBI, the ED registered a case of cash laundering and located that Martin and his web of corporations made “unlawful gain” amounting to Rs 910 crore by inflicting loss to the Sikkim authorities by inflating the value of prize-winning lottery tickets between 2009 and 2010.
The company has made a number of attachments within the case, amounting to greater than Rs 500 crore final yr in September.
Additionally, throughout the identical time, the ED had additionally filed a prosecution grievance towards the corporate and stated that it had dishonoured the settlement it signed with states for promoting the state-organised lotteries throughout India and that it was not transferring all the sale proceeds to the state governments.
“The modus operandi also includes illegally retaining unsold lottery, claiming prizes on unsold lotteries, manipulating data to show unsold prize-winning tickets as sold and claimed prizes on same, which are also in contravention of Lottery Regulation Act, 1998,” the ED had stated after submitting a prosecution grievance towards the Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR and 14 different companies.
As a part of the probe, the company had hooked up proceeds of crime amounting to Rs 411 crore, it stated within the assertion on 22 September, 2023.
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd.
Headquartered in Hyderabad, Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd has donated a whopping Rs 966 crore. Its first electoral bond was bought on 12 April May, 2019, and its final on 12 October final yr, the info uploaded by the EC confirmed.
All the 966 bonds bought by the corporate had been of Rs 1 crore denomination and the corporate bought 4 bonds of Rs 1 crore every on 3 October, 2019 — only a week earlier than the groups of the Income Tax Department performed raids on the premises linked to the agency and its managing director P.V. Krishna Reddy.
The firm bought bonds price Rs 140 crore on 11 April, 2023, only a month earlier than bagging a large infrastructure contract price Rs 14,400 crore to construct the Thane-Borivali twin tunnel undertaking in Mumbai.
Another firm named Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited, which additionally has P.V. Krishna Reddy as director, bought 30 bonds of Rs 1 crore every on 11 January this yr, making the cumulative donation from the group round Rs 1,000 crore by way of electoral bonds.
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd additionally bought the contract for the Kaleshwaram Irrigation undertaking over the Godavari River in Telangana, which was a flagship undertaking of the earlier state authorities led by Ok. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR).
The undertaking, which was inaugurated by KCR in June 2019, was highlighted in a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) tabled within the state meeting in February, which referred to as the undertaking “economically unviable”.
“The Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR) of the project was inflated. Even with the understated project cost of Rs 81,911.01 crore, BCR works out to 0.75. Considering the latest likely project cost (Rs 1,47,427.41 crore), the BCR works out to 0.52. This means that every rupee spent on the project would yield only 52 paise. It clearly indicates that the project was, ab initio, economically unviable,” the CAG had stated within the efficiency audit of the undertaking.
Earlier final month, ThePrint reported that though the undertaking has not been offering water to the state for irrigation functions as deliberate throughout its launch, it’s costing the exchequer a whopping Rs 18,000 crore yearly.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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