“In compliance of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s directions, contained in its order dated Feb 15 & March 11, 2024 (in the matter of WPC NO.880 of 2017), the State Bank of India (SBI) had provided the data pertaining to the electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on March 12, 2024.
Click here for the full list of donors and recipient political parties
“The Election Commission of India has today uploaded the data on electoral bonds on its website as received from SBI on “as is where is basis”, the ECI said in a statement.
On March 11, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea filed by the SBI seeking an extension till June 30 for disclosure of the data on electoral bonds. It asked that the data be submitted to the ECI by March 12. The poll body was in turn asked to publish the information on its website by 5 p.m. on March 15.
The SBI had sought time till June 30 saying it needed time to match the buyers of the bonds with the political parties which encashed it. To this the apex court said that the information on purchasers of electoral bonds, the denomination of the bonds, and the bonds redeemed by the respective political parties are easily available and do not need matching.
“It may be recalled that in the said matter, ECI has consistently and categorically weighed in favour of disclosure and transparency, a position reflected in the proceedings of the Hon’ble Supreme Court and noted in the order also,” the ECI statement on March 14 said.
ECI asks Supreme Court to return sealed electoral bonds documents
The ECI, represented by advocate Amit Sharma, said the documents were given to the court confidentially in compliance with two orders on April 12, 2019 and November 2, 2023.
The application referred to a direction issued on March 11 by the Bench in its order that the “copies of the statements which were filed by the ECI before this court would be maintained in the office of the ECI”.
The ECI said it had handed over to the apex court a sealed cover, which contained 106 sealed envelopes, and then sealed boxes containing a total of 523 sealed envelopes in two tranches in pursuance of the judicial orders of April 2019 and November 2023.
The ECI said it had not retained copies of these documents. “The Election Commission of India forwarded the documents received by it to this court in sealed covers/boxes without retaining any copies. Documents/data/information submitted by the Election Commission of India to this court in sealed covers/boxes may be returned to it in order to enable the Election Commission of India to comply with the directions passed by the court on March 11, 2024,” the application said.
March 11 had seen the five-judge Bench refuse State Bank of India an extension of time till June 30 to disclose the electoral bonds’ purchase and encashment details to the ECI. The ECI was directed to publish the information handed over by the SBI on its official website by March 15.
A statement released by the ECI on March 14 said the top poll body has “uploaded the data on electoral bonds on its website as received from SBI on ‘as is where is basis’ in furtherance of disclosure and transparency.
Mamata Banerjee suffers major injury, admitted to hospital
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on March 14 evening suffered a major injury on her forehead and was admitted to a hospital, the Trinamool Congress said.
“Our chairperson @MamataOfficial sustained a major injury. Please keep her in your prayers,” the party posted on X along with pictures of Ms. Mamata Banerjee bleeding from her forehead.
According to sources, she was admitted to the state-run SSKM Hospital in Kolkata.
The details of how she received the injury are still awaited.
Trinamool Congress national general secretary and Ms. Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee got her admitted to the hospital, according to party sources.
State BJP president Sukanta Majumdar wished her a speedy recovery. “Our prayers are with her for a quick return to good health,” he posted on X.
Election Commissioners appointment | Ex-bureaucrats Sukhbir Sandhu, Gyanesh Kumar named EC
Former bureaucrats Sukhbir Singh Sandhu from Punjab and Gyanesh Kumar from Kerala have been named as the new Election Commissioners by a panel chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, committee member and Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said on March 14.
Addressing reporters at his residence soon after the meeting ended, Chowdhury said six names came up before the panel for the selection of the two ECs and the names of Sandhu and Kumar were finalised by a majority of members of the high-powered panel.
He, however, said the Chief Justice of India should have been part of the selection panel and there was no clarity on how six names were shortlisted from over 200 candidates that are said to have come before the search committee headed by the Law Minister.
The six names shortlisted were that of Utpal Kumar Singh, Pradeep Kumar Tripathi, Gyanesh Kumar, Indevar Pandey, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, Sudhir Kumar Gangadhar Rahate, all former bureaucrats.
“Of the six names, the names of Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu were finalised for appointment as election commissioners,” he said.
During his tenure in the Home Ministry, Gyanesh Kumar oversaw the abrogation of Article 370. The vacancies had come up after the retirement of Anup Chandra Pandey on February 14 and the sudden resignation of Arun Goel.
Obscure trust links India’s top businesses with Modi’s election war chest
The Prudent Electoral Trust has raised $272 million since its creation in 2013, funnelling roughly 75% of that to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party. The trust’s donations to the BJP total 10 times as much as the $20.6 million it issued to the Opposition Congress, the records show.
The previous Congress-led government introduced electoral trusts in 2013 to allow for tax-exempt contribution to parties. It said the mechanism would make campaign financing more transparent by reducing cash contributions, which are harder to trace.
But some election experts say the trusts contribute to opacity around the funding of political parties in the country, where this year’s general election – due to be called within weeks – is expected to return Modi to power for a rare third term, polls predict.
While Prudent does not disclose how donations made by individual corporate donors are distributed, Reuters used public records from 2018 to 2023 to track flows from some of India’s largest companies.
Eight of India’s biggest business groups donated at least $50 million in total between 2019 and 2023 to the trust, which then issued cheques for corresponding amounts to the BJP, according to the Reuters analysis.
Four companies whose transactions were identified by Reuters — steel giant ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel, telco Bharti Airtel, infrastructure developer GMR and energy giant Essar — have not given money to the party directly and do not appear on its donors’ list.
GMR and Bharti Airtel said in response to Reuters questions that Prudent determines how their donations are distributed. Prudent decides “as per their internal guidelines, which we are unaware of,” said a GMR spokesman. He added that the company doesn’t “like to align with any political party.”
Bharti Airtel, which created Prudent before transferring control to independent auditors Mukul Goyal and Venkatachalam Ganesh in 2014, said it has “no influence on the decisions, directions and mode of disbursal of funds”.
Prudent — the largest of India’s 18 electoral trusts — is legally required to declare how much it has collected from each donor and the total amounts disbursed to each party. But it is the only one among India’s four largest electoral trusts to accept contributions from more than one corporate group.
Trusts “provide one layer of separation between firms and parties,” said Milan Vaishnav, an expert on Indian campaign finance at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think-tank.
Political finance in India is widely seen as murky, with most political donations undisclosed, Vaishnav added. The BJP said in its latest public disclosure in March 2023 that its political war chest — funds it had available including cash reserves and assets — was valued at ₹70.4 billion ($850 million). That gives it a colossal financial advantage over the Congress, which had ₹7.75 billion in funds.
The records show that Prudent was also the largest-known donor to the Congress in the decade to March 2023.
The Supreme Court said in a February campaign finance ruling that corporate contributions are “purely business transactions made with the intent of securing benefits in return”.
The BJP’s next largest known donor is Tata Group’s Progressive Electoral Trust, which has given the party ₹3.6 billion collected from the salt-to-airline conglomerate’s companies. Progressive is also the Congress’s next largest donor, having given it ₹655 million.
Progressive’s by-laws require it to distribute funds proportionate to the number of seats held by each party in Parliament. Prudent has no similar restrictions and Reuters’ analysis of its donations found no such pattern.
Trusts are allowed to retain a maximum of ₹3,00,000 for annual operating expenses. Remaining funds must be disbursed in the fiscal year they were received. In its analysis of contribution reports filed by Prudent to electoral authorities, Reuters identified 18 transactions between 2019 and 2022 in which the eight corporate groups made large donations to the trust. Within days, Prudent issued cheques for the same amounts to the BJP.
Before the 18 contributions, which are not exhaustive of all the donations made by the groups to Prudent, the trust did not have sufficient funds for the payments to the BJP. Companies tied to billionaire L.N. Mittal’s ArcelorMittal group were among Prudent’s most prolific donors.
On July 12, 2021, for instance, ArcelorMittal Design and Engineering Centre Private Limited gave Prudent a cheque for ₹500 million ($6.03 million). The next day, Prudent issued a cheque to the BJP for the same amount.
ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India also issued ₹200 million to Prudent on November. 1, 2021, and ₹500 million on November 16, 2022. The respective sums were sent to the BJP on November 5, 2021, and November 17, 2022.
Bharti Airtel, meanwhile, issued ₹250 million to Prudent on January 13, 2022 and ₹150 million on March 25, 2021. The trust sent out cheques to the BJP for those amounts on January 14, 2023 and March 25, 2021.
And three companies in the RP-Sanjiv Goenka group — Haldia Energy India, Phillips Carbon Black and Crescent Power — cut cheques for ₹250 million, ₹200 million and ₹50 million on March 15, March 16, and March 19, 2021 respectively. On March 17, the BJP received a ₹450-million-cheque from Prudent; a ₹50-million-cheque followed on March 20. The RPSG group did not respond to requests for comment.
Donations from Serum Institute and companies in GMR Group, DLF Ltd. and Essar Group moved to the BJP immediately after Prudent received them.
Reuters was unable to identify a similar pattern of funds being sent to the trust and transferred to the Congress immediately afterwards. However, Reuters found similar patterns involving two regional parties. Megha Engineering and Infrastructure transferred ₹750 million to Prudent across three transactions on July 5 and July 6, 2022. The trust issued a ₹750-million-cheque on July 7 to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in Telangana, where Megha group is headquartered.
Public records and party reports show the BJP’s war chest has swelled since Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, from ₹7.8 billion ($94.09 million) in March 2014 to ₹70.4 billion in March 2023. The Congress’ funds increased from ₹5.38 billion to ₹7.75 billion in the same time period.
The financing gap between the BJP and the Congress is a cause of concern, said Jagdeep Chhokar of Association of Democratic Reforms, a Delhi-based civil society group that was the main petitioner behind the electoral bonds challenge in the Supreme Court. “Level playing field is an essential part of democracy,” he said.
The BJP has been the major beneficiary of electoral bonds, a mechanism that allowed donors to give unlimited amounts to parties without public disclosure. It received some ₹65.66 billion of the ₹120.1 billion worth of such bonds sold between their January 2018 introduction and March 2023. Such bonds made up more than half the contributions received by the BJP in all but one fiscal year since their introduction.
Ram Nath Kovind-led panel recommends simultaneous polls, common electoral roll in report submitted to President
The high-level committee on ‘’one nation one election”, headed by former President Ram Nath Kovind, submitted its report on simultaneous polls to President Droupadi Murmu on March 14. The committee met the Honourable President of India at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The panel recommended simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and state assemblies as the first step followed by synchronised local body polls within 100 days. The report comprises of 18,626 pages, and has been prepared after extensive consultations with stakeholders, experts and research work of 191 days.
Simultaneous polls will spur development and social cohesion, deepen “foundations of democratic rubric” and help realise the aspirations of “India, that is Bharat”, the panel said.
The committee recommended that fresh elections could be held to constitute a new Lok Sabha in the event of a hung House or a no-confidence motion, or any such event.
Where fresh elections are held for the House of the People (Lok Sabha), the tenure of the House will be “only for the unexpired (remaining) term of the immediately preceding full term of the House”, it said.
When fresh elections are held for state legislative assemblies, then such new assemblies — unless sooner dissolved — shall continue up to the end of the full term of the Lok Sabha.
To bring into force such a mechanism, Article 83 (duration of Houses of Parliament) and Article 172 (duration of state legislatures) need to be amended, the committee said. “This Constitutional amendment will not need ratification by the states,” the committee said.
The panel also recommended preparation of a common electoral roll and voter ID cards by the Election Commission of India in consultation with state election authorities.
It said Article 325 dealing with voters’ list may be suitably amended for the purpose.
At present, the ECI is responsible for Lok Sabha and assembly polls, while local body polls for municipalities and panchayats are managed by state election commissions.
The panel recommended several constitutional amendments, most of which will not need ratification by states. “Now, several elections are being held every year. This casts a huge burden on the government, businesses, workers, courts, political parties, candidates contesting elections, and civil society at large,” the panel said. It said the government must develop a “legally tenable mechanism” to restore the cycle of simultaneous elections.
An official statement said the committee crafted its recommendations in such a way that they are in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution and would require bare minimum amendments to the Constitution.
The Kovind panel includes Home Minister Amit Shah, former leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Finance Commission chairman N.K. Singh, former Lok Sabha Secretary General Subhash Kashyap and senior advocate Harish Salve. The Committee was constituted on 2 September, 2023 and was mandated to examine and make recommendations with regard to holding simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha, State Assemblies, municipalities and panchayats.
Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal is a special invitee to the panel. Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury opted out of the panel after stating that the entire exercise was an “eye wash” since the panel was in favour of recommending simultaneous polls even before the start of the consultation process.
The 22nd Law Commission, that has examined the issue in detail, had also suggested holding simultaneous polls from the general election of 2029. The Law Commission, that has already submitted its views to the Kovind panel, is also likely to submit its final report to the Law Ministry soon.
I&B Ministry blocks 18 OTT platforms and associated social media accounts for publishing vulgar content
The Information & Broadcasting Ministry has blocked 18 OTT platforms on the charge of publishing obscene and vulgar content. The 19 websites, 10 apps and 57 social media handles associated with these platforms have also been blocked nationwide.
The action has been taken, in coordination with various intermediaries, for violations of the Information Technology Act, Indian Penal Code, and Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act. While seven of the blocked apps were hosted on Google Play Store, three were on Apple App Store, said the Ministry.
“Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting Anurag Singh Thakur has repeatedly emphasised the responsibility of the platforms to not propagate obscenity, vulgarity, and abuse under the guise of ‘creative expression’. On March 12, 2024, Thakur announced that 18 OTT platforms publishing obscene and vulgar content have been taken down,” it said.
Among the blocked OTT platforms are Dreams Films, Voovi, Yessma, Uncut Adda, Tri Flicks, X Prime, Neon X VIP, Besharams, Hunters, Rabbit, Xtramood, Nuefliks, MoodX, Mojflix, Hot Shots VIP, Fugi, Chikooflix, and Prime Play. The Ministry said a significant portion of the content hosted on these platforms was found to be obscene, vulgar, and portrayed women in a demeaning manner.
“It depicted nudity and sexual acts in various inappropriate contexts, such as relationships between teachers and students, incestuous family relationships, etc. The content included sexual innuendos and, in some instances, prolonged segments of pornographic and sexually explicit scenes devoid of any thematic or societal relevance,” said the Ministry.
One of the OTT apps had amassed over 1 crore downloads, while two others had over 50 lakh downloads on the Google Play Store. “Additionally, these OTT platforms extensively utilised social media to disseminate trailers, specific scenes, and external links aimed at attracting audiences to their websites and apps. The social media accounts...had a cumulative followership of over 32 lakh users,” it said. The social media accounts were on Facebook (12), Instagram (17), X (16), and YouTube (12).
In Brief
The Supreme Court on March 14 asked Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar to not “ride piggyback” on uncle and Nationalist Congress Party founder Sharad Pawar to get votes. A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and K.V. Viswanathan said Ajit Pawar should desist from using the elder Pawar’s photographs and name on his party pamphlets and notices.
Evening Wrap will return tomorrow.
Published - March 14, 2024 10:05 pm IST
