Top TN parties come clean on poll bond; Martin DMK’s biggest donor

DMK, AIADMK among the few to disclose details; biggest beneficiary BJP yet to reveal

Top purchaser of electoral bonds Future Gaming and Hotel Services donated Rs 509 crore to ruling DMK through the now-scrapped payment mode, the Election Commission’s (EC) data showed on Sunday.

The donations given by Future Gaming, whose owner, “lottery king” Santiago Martin, has been under the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) scanner, accounted for more than 77 per cent of the total receipts from electoral bonds of Rs 656.5 crore disclosed by the DMK.

Since most political parties have not disclosed the names of the donors, it was not known who were the beneficiaries of the remaining bonds worth Rs 859 crore purchased by Future Gaming.

The disclosure is part of the data dump pertaining to a total of 523 recognised and non-recognised political parties made public by the EC on the Supreme Court’s orders.

The DMK is among the few political parties that have disclosed the identity of the donors, while major parties such as the BJP, Congress, TMC and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have not revealed these details to the EC, which has now made public those filings pursuant to a Supreme Court order.

Future Gaming was the biggest purchaser of electoral bonds at Rs 1,368 crore, of which nearly 37 per cent went to the DMK. Other major donors of the party included the second-largest purchaser of electoral bonds, Megha Engineering (Rs 105 crore); India Cements (Rs 14 crore) and Sun TV (Rs 100 crore).

Among the major parties that have disclosed the identity of their donors, the AIADMK got most of its donations from India Cements-owned IPL cricket team Chennai Super Kings.

The Centre-ruling BJP received the maximum funds through these bonds at Rs 6,986.5 crore since they were introduced in 2018, followed by Trinamool Congress (Rs 1,397 crore), Congress (Rs 1,334 crore), BRS (Rs 1,322 crore), BJD (Rs 944.5 crore), DMK (Rs 656.5 crore) and YSRCP (Rs 442.8 crore).

According to an earlier report compiled by the Association of Democratic Reforms, electoral bonds worth Rs 16,518 crore were sold from March 2018 to January 2024. Collating the two datasets, the BJP is estimated to have received a total amount of Rs 7,700 crore during the entire duration of the scheme.