Company that's biggest electoral bond donor funded 10 state-level parties

Future Gaming and Hotel Services spread its bets across national and regional players

Electoral bonds purchased by Future Gaming and Hotel Services match the identification numbers of donations received by at least 13 political parties in India. The company last week emerged as the leading contributor of electoral bonds, which were used to fund parties anonymously and were scrapped by the Supreme Court.

These include three national parties and 10 state-level entities. Future Gaming purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore. The identification numbers of its bonds match against the identification numbers of the bonds received by political parties.

It donated to the BJP in 2019, when national elections were held, and in 2021, 2022, 2023, data published by the Election Commission (EC) shows. It made donations to the BJP in 2024 before the schedule for national elections was announced. It did not donate to the Congress, India’s main Opposition party, in the latest EC data available for 2024, but gave it donations in from 2020 to 2023. It did not give donations to the Congress in 2019, but did so for the Aam Aadmi Party in 2021 and 2023.

Among regional parties, Future Gaming gave donations to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. It gave donations to the All India Trinamool Congress between 2020 and 2024. West Bengal held assembly elections in 2021. The company made donations to the Telangana-based Bharat Rashtra Samithi in 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

The Election Commission released the identification number of bonds on Thursday. It had earlier released the names of the largest buyers, and the recipients without the numbers that can connect the two. The latest release allows for broad reconciliation between the two sets of data.

The electoral bond disclosures come on the back of a Supreme Court directive to the State Bank of India. The court in February scrapped the electoral bond scheme. It pointed out that the anonymity and structure of the scheme allowed companies to donate large amounts to political parties. There has previously been a cap on the amount that companies can donate to political parties. This is to limit their influence on policy. The Supreme Court decision effectively brought back this cap.

The top ten donors which used the electoral bond scheme were all corporate entities. Future Gaming was the largest buyer of the bonds. Others include Megha Engineering and Infrastructures (Rs 966 crore) and Qwik Supply Chain (Rs 410 crore).

The total value of electoral bonds issued was more than Rs 16,000 crore. The current disclosures of full details cover the period from 2019 onwards. This encompasses over Rs 12,000 crore worth of bonds.