NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India made data on electoral bonds public on March 14 two days after SBI submitted the entire data on anonymously purchased bonds to the Supreme Court as per which it has issued electoral bonds worth Rs 16,518 crore in 30 tranches since the inception of the scheme in 2018. 

Electoral Bonds functioned like Promissory notes and interest-free banking tools. Any Indian citizen or organization registered in India could buy these bonds after fulfilling the KYC norms laid down by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Among parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) encashed electoral bonds worth Rs 6,060.5 crore — the highest among all parties — within this period. In fact, the BJP’s share of the total bonds encashed by parties was over 47.5%. The All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) received Rs 1,609.50 crore (12.6%) via this route, followed by the Congress Party, which received Rs 1,421.9 crore (11.1%), the second and third biggest parties in terms of encashment during the period. The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (9.5%), Biju Janata Dal (6.1%), and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (5%) were the other parties which encashed more than Rs 500 crore worth of electoral bonds during this period.

The highest donors were among the two lesser-known companies Future Gaming And Hotel Services with Rs 1,368 crore, and Megha Engineering And Infrastructure Ltd (Megha) with Rs 980 crore worth of donations.

Future Gaming is reportedly owned by Santiago Martin known as the 'Lottery King' of India, while Megha, which builds dams and power projects, is owned by PV Krishna Reddy and PP Reddy. 

Future Gaming has been under the lens of the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax Department. On July 23, 2019, the Enforcement Directorate attached assets worth Rs 250 crore in an alleged money laundering scam. In 2019, Income Tax Department officials raided 70 premises linked to Martin across India.  Megha is a Telangana-based industrial conglomerate, established in 1989 as Megha Engineering Enterprises by Pamireddy Pitchi Reddy now run by his nephew P V Krishna Reddy. According to Forbes, Megha built one of the largest irrigation projects worth $14 billion in drought-prone Telangana. The project became operational in 2019. In 2023, P P Reddy ranked 54 in the richest Indians list as per Forbes.

Megha's other prominent project was the Zojila Tunnel near the Himalayas. Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Limited completed the 5-km-long tunnelling work as part of the 18-km-long all-weather Zojila Tunnel in January 2022. Zojila project, Asia's longest bi-directional tunnel, ensures connectivity between Srinagar and Ladakh.  Last year, it received a Rs 5000 crore order from the defence ministry. In April 2023, MEIL won two separate packages to build the Thane-Borivali twin tunnel project in Mumbai, defeating infrastructure giant Larsen & Toubro. 

Megha was accused of fraud in the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS) this year. In January, Deccan Chronicle reported that Megha Engineering pocketed thousands of crores of the public in KLIS. Citing the audit report of the Comptroller and Audit General (CAG), MEIL was paid an excess of Rs 5,188.43 crore in four packages. The amount could be more than this as there were 17 more such packages, the report mentioned. Congress and the BJP accused K Chandrasekhar Rao's BRS party of showing patronage to Megha.