Biggest Electoral Bonds Purchaser Is Top Donor For This Party

'Lottery king' Santiago Martin's Future Gaming and Hotel Services - which emerged as the top purchaser of electoral bonds - donated Rs 509 crore to Tamil Nadu's ruling party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. The DMK received bonds worth Rs 656.5 crore under the now-scrapped electoral bonds system, which allowed anonymous and unlimited donations to political parties, the Election Commission data showed today.

Future Gaming purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore, of which nearly 37 per cent went to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam or DMK. Megha Engineering (Rs 105 crore), India Cements (Rs 14 crore) and Sun TV (Rs 10 crore) were other major donors of the DMK which was among the few political parties to disclose the identity of the donors.

Fresh Data On Electoral Bonds

The Election Commission today made public fresh data on electoral bonds, which it had submitted in sealed covers to the Supreme Court and was later asked to put it in public domain. These details are believed to be from the period before April 12, 2019. Electoral bond details after this date were made public by the poll panel last week.

Political parties had filed data on Electoral Bonds in sealed cover as directed by the Supreme Court's interim order dated April 12, 2019, the poll panel said in a statement.

As per the data, the ruling BJP was the biggest overall recipient (Rs 6,986.5 crore) of the bonds since they were introduced in 2018. The Trinamool Congress was the second biggest recipient (Rs 1,397 crore) followed by Congress (Rs 1,334 crore), BRS (Rs 1,322 crore) and Odisha's ruling party BJD at Rs 944.5. The DMK was the sixth biggest recipient.

Who Is Santiago Martin?

Santiago Martin's Future Gaming and Hotel Services purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore between 2019 and 2024 - 40% more than the next-highest donor, according to data uploaded by the Election Commission on its website on Thursday.

Mr Martin built a lottery-to-real estate empire up from selling lottery tickets as a teenager. He worked as a teenage labourer in Myanmar to support his family and returned to India in the late 1980s and began his business career in Coimbatore, according to his nonprofit Martin Charitable Trust.

His two-digit lottery gained popularity in the region and Mr Martin expanded to other states and eventually to neighbouring Bhutan and Nepal, where he had a monopoly on distributing the tickets, according to his website.

Over the years, investigative agencies have searched his business premises and seized properties in connection with cases against him. His appeals against property seizures by the Enforcement Directorate were dismissed last year.

Mr Martin has denied wrongdoing. His conglomerate, Martin Group, said in October the group and its firms obey the law and that Mr Martin was India's highest taxpayer in the financial year to March 2003.

What Is The Electoral Bonds Case?

The Supreme Court scrapped the electoral bonds scheme in a landmark verdict last month, calling it "unconstitutional" and ordered the State Bank of India (SBI), the authorised financial institution under the scheme, to submit the details of the bonds to the Election Commission of India.

The bank was first asked to submit the data by March 6 but it approached the Supreme Court seeking an extension till June 30. The court, however, junked the petition and ordered it to disclose the details by the close of business hours on March 12. It also asked the poll body to publish the information on its website on March 15.