Pre-2019 Data on Electoral Bonds: BRS Got Rs 86 Crore Before 2018 Assembly Polls

In the 2018-19 period, YSRCP, TDP, and JD(S) also received donations prior to the elections.

The party received these bonds just a few weeks ahead of the Assembly elections held in December 2018 – in which the BRS (then Telangana Rashtra Samithi) shot to power for a second term with a whopping majority of 88 out of 119 seats.

(Photo: Chetan Bhakuni/The Quint)

As per the fresh data made public by the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in Telangana received electoral bond donations totalling Rs 1,322 crore from 11 October 2018 to 25 July 2023. 

The ECI on Sunday, 17 March, released sealed cover documents submitted by various political parties – which also contained information of bonds encashed before 12 April 2019. Until Sunday, data was publicly available only for the period from 12 April 2019 to 24 January 2024. 

The new data shows that K Chandrasekhar Rao's party encashed Rs 86 crore worth of electoral bonds from 11 October 2018 to 16 November 2018.

Incidentally, it received these bonds just a few weeks ahead of the Assembly elections held in December 2018 – in which the BRS (then Telangana Rashtra Samithi) shot to power for a second term with a whopping majority of 88 out of 119 seats.

After the Assembly polls, the BRS also received Rs 107.5 crore from 7 January 2019 to 10 April 2019; the Lok Sabha elections in the state were held on 11 April 2019. It was also during this period that the party was accused of engineering the defections of 12 Congress MLAs in the state.

Since the previously released data showed that the party received Rs 1,214 crore worth of bonds from April 2019 to November 2023, it can be inferred that the party's total earnings from electoral bonds is around Rs 1,408 crore.

The BRS, however, has not revealed the names of donors in the sealed cover document. Therefore, it is difficult to say who donated to the party during this period.

Apart from Telangana, the South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka saw Assembly elections in the 2018-19 period. Let's take a look at some other regional parties in these states that received donations through electoral bonds shortly before the polls. 

YSRCP

As per the latest data, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy's YSR Congress Party – now the ruling party in Andhra Pradesh – encashed Rs 7.2 crore from 12 April 2018 to 17 November 2018.

But from 14 January 2019 to 9 April 2019, the party received Rs 158.6 crore. The Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the state were simultaneously held on 11 April 2019.

In total, the YSRCP has received around Rs 503 crore as electoral bond donations from 2018-2024. But the highest it received was between April 2018 and April 2019 – around Rs 166 crore. 

The YSRCP toppled the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP) from power in Andhra Pradesh in 2019.  

TDP

The Telugu Desam Party, which was in power in Andhra Pradesh in 2018, encashed Rs 3.5 crore on 20 November 2018, as per the latest ECI data. 

From 14 January 2019 to 10 April 2019, the party encashed about Rs 98 crore, before the Assembly and Parliamentary polls in the state.

As per the previously released data, the TDP got bonds worth Rs 218 crore from 12 April 2019 till date. With the new figures, the party's total earnings from bonds is around Rs 320 crore.

In other words, from November 2018 to mid-April 2019 (before the elections), the TDP encashed nearly 32 percent of the total bonds it received.   

JD(S)

HD Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular) is one of the few parties to mention the names of its donors in the sealed cover documents submitted to the ECI. 

From 20 March 2018 to 17 April 2018 – weeks before the Karnataka Assembly elections on 12 May 2018 – the party got electoral bonds worth Rs 13.25 crore.

Of this, Rs 1 crore was donated by Narayana Murthy's Infosys, Rs 25 lakh by Health Care Global Enterprises, and the remaining Rs 12 crore by the Embassy Group. In the previously released data, neither Infosys, Health Care Global, nor Embassy Group were listed as donors of any party.

From 20 March 2018 to 11 April 2019 – data for which was previously unavailable – the party encashed Rs 46.25 crore. Of this, Rs 22.5 crore was encashed between January 2019 and April 2019, shortly before the Lok Sabha elections that year.

Interestingly, before the Karnataka Assembly elections in May 2023, the party got funding from Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) to the tune of Rs 40 crore in April. MEIL is the second biggest donor among all companies that donated bonds to political parties. The company had also donated Rs 10 crore to JD(S) in March 2019, before the Lok Sabha elections.

MEIL is also the top donor of the party. You can read more about the company here.