Narayana Murthy-led Infosys donated Rs 1 crore to Janata Dal (Secular) two months before the 2018 Karnataka elections, shows the latest data on electoral bonds disclosed by the Election Commission on Sunday.
The previous list featured Indian conglomerates like the Reliance group and the Aditya Birla group. It contained details of bonds purchased after April 12, 2019 – leaving out details of electoral bonds worth Rs 4,002 crore issued between March 2018 and April 2019.
The fresh data released on Sunday contains filings by political parties for the bonds redeemed between 2018 and November 2023. These filings made to the Election Commission, submitted to the Supreme Court in a sealed cover, were made public on the court’s orders.
According to the Janata Dal (Secular) filing, Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies Limited donated Rs 1 crore in electoral bonds to the party on March 20, 2018.
Karnataka went to polls on May 12, 2018. The Janata Dal (Secular) won 37 of the 224 seats in that election. After a brief stint of the BS Yeddyurappa-led Bharatiya Janata Party government, an alliance of the Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) formed the government and Kumaraswamy became the state’s chief minister.
During Kumaraswamy’s tenure as chief minister between May 2018 and July 2019, his party received Rs 25 crore through bonds from a range of companies: Megha Engineering and Constructions Limited, Shahi Exports, JSW Steel, Amar Raj Group, Aditya Birla Group and Shankaranarayana Constructions.
Altogether, between 2018 and 2024, the Janata Dal (Secular) received Rs 89.5 crore in electoral bonds. The single-largest donor to the party is Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Constructions Limited, which donated Rs 50 crore, followed by Bengaluru-based real-estate group, Embassy, which donated Rs 22 crore.
Apart from the Janata Dal (Secular), only three other political parties – Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and Nationalist Congress Party – have disclosed the names of the donors in their filings to the Election Commission.
With inputs from Anisha Sheth
This report is part of a collaborative project involving three news organisations – Newslaundry, Scroll, The News Minute – and independent journalists.
Project Electoral Bond includes Aban Usmani, Anand Mangnale, Anisha Sheth, Anjana Meenakshi, Ayush Tiwari, Azeefa Fathima, Basant Kumar, Dhanya Rajendran, Divya Aslesha, Jayashree Arunachalam, Joyal, M Rajshekhar, Maria Teresa Raju, Nandini Chandrashekar, Neel Madhav, Nikita Saxena, Parth MN, Pooja Prasanna, Prajwal Bhat, Prateek Goyal, Pratyush Deep, Ragamalika Karthikeyan, Raman Kirpal, Ravi Nair, Sachi Hegde, Shabbir Ahmed, Shivnarayan Rajpurohit, Siddharth Mishra, Supriya Sharma, Tabassum Barnagarwala and Vaishnavi Rathore.
