In August 2022, the Calcutta High Court gave Rashmi Metaliks a clean chit in the money-laundering case.
The group purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 13 crore in October 2022, Rs 9 crore in January 2023, Rs 15 crore in July 2023, Rs 11.5 crore in October 2023, and Rs 5 crore in November 2023.
In December 2023, the Rashmi Group forayed into mining after the Union Ministry of Coal allotted it three mines in West Bengal.
Between October 2019 and November 2022, various entities of the DLF group bought electoral bonds worth a total of Rs 170 crore. Going against the trend of the other companies on this list, DLF stopped buying bonds after it was raided.
In December 2022, Noida authorities issued a notice of Rs 235 crore to DLF regarding compensation to the previous owner of a plot on which the group had built a mall.
In November 2023, the Enforcement Directorate raided the Gurugram-based DLF premises in its money-laundering probe against another real estate group, Supertech.
8. Reddy’s Labs
Reddy’s Laboratories bought electoral bonds worth Rs 7 crore on May 8, 2019. It also purchased bonds worth Rs 27 crore in October 2022, Rs 15 crore in November 2022, and Rs 4 crore in July 2022.
In November 2023, Income Tax officials had raided an employee of the company, K Narender Reddy, for alleged cash transactions. The raids were part of several other raids on the same day, which included people close to Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader P Sabitha Indra Reddy.
Just after the raids, the company purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 31 crore, followed by Rs 21 crore in November 2023, and Rs 10 crore in January 2024, adding up to Rs 84 crore.
9. Navayuga Engineering
Navayuga Engineering Company Limited has purchased a total of Rs 55 crore in electoral bonds in April 2019 and October 2022. It was raided by Income Tax officials in October 2018, six months before the company bought its first set of electoral bonds.
In April 2021, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd acquired complete control of Krishnapatnam Port Co Ltd from the Navayuga Group for Rs 2,800 crore.
The company hit the headlines again in November 2023 because it had built the Uttarakhand tunnel that collapsed, trapping of 41 workers for 17 days.
10. Aditya Birla Group: Utkal Alumina and Grasim Industries
Utkal Alumina International Limited bought electoral bonds worth Rs 145 crores in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. The company is a fully owned subsidiary of Hindalco, a part of the Aditya Birla Group.
In February 2019, the Odisha State Pollution Control Board issued a show cause notice to Utkal Alumina, revoking consent to operate the Baphlimali bauxite mine. Later in the same year, villagers staged a protest, which turned violent, against the company’s plant in Rayagada district.
In October 2023, the state-owned Odisha Mining Corporation and Hindalco, the parent company of Utkal Alumina, signed a memorandum of understanding for the “long-term linkage of raw material” policy of the Odisha government, for the Hindalco alumina refinery at Kansariguda in Rayagada.
Another Aditya Birla Group company, Grasim Industries Limited, bought electoral bonds worth Rs 20 crore in April 2019, Rs 3 crore in October 2019 and Rs 10 crore In October 2020. However, a year later, the Income Tax Department slapped a Rs 8,334 crore income tax demand as capital gains tax in a transaction related to the demerger of its financial services business.
11. United Phosphorus
UPL Limited, formerly United Phosphorus, bought electoral bonds worth Rs 10 crore in October 2019 and Rs 50 crore in November 2022. The company faced income tax raids in January 2020, on allegations of tax evasion and account manipulation.
12. Aurobindo Pharma
Aurobindo Pharma Limited is a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Hyderabad. The company manufactures generic pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients. The company bought Rs 52 crore worth of electoral bonds between 2021 and 2023.
In November 2022, the Enforcement Directorate arrested its director, Sarath Reddy, on charges of money laundering as part of investigations into the Delhi liquor policy case. Reddy has also been director of APL Healthcare in 2009, which bought electoral bonds worth Rs 10 crore in November 2023.
The other director of Aurobindo Pharma, Girish Paman Vanvari, was a director at Avon Cycles Limited, which purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 1.4 crore in October 2022.
13. Trident Chemphar
In July 2022, Trident Chemphar, a Hyderabad-based group, bought electoral bonds worth Rs 5 crore. An employee of the group, E Chandran, approached the Telangana High Court in November 2022 against the Enforcement Directorate alleging torture. He was accused in the Delhi liquor policy case.
Trident’s directors are Venkata Krishna Anjaneya Prasad Marthy, Sadananda Reddy Sannareddy, Chiranjeevi Kondreddy and Lakshmi Vara Koka. Three of the four directors have been involved with Veritaz Healthcare Limited, which was acquired by Aurobindo Pharma in March 2022.
Marthy was a co-director at Veritaz while Sadananda Reddy and Kondreddy were additional directors. Aurobindo Pharma’s director Sarath Reddy is also accused in the Delhi liquor policy case.
14. IFB Agro Limited
IFB Agro Limited bought bonds worth Rs 92.3 crore from 2021 to 2024.
In June 2020, the company’s Noorpur plant in West Bengal was attacked by armed men, leading to an uproar. Jagdeep Dhankar, who was the West Bengal governor, stepped in and demanded a deeper probe, raising concerns about whether the climate was actually conducive for investment. The day after the attack, on June 25, 2020, the company faced a Goods and Services Tax search at the same plant.
In 2022, the company’s board of directors approved “contributions to political parties by way of subscription to the electoral bonds in one or more tranches aggregating not more than Rs 40 crore for the financial year 2022-23”. The company’s board added that it was facing “excise related issues”.
In a recording of the company’s Annual General Meeting for 2023, Joint Executive Chairman Bikramjit Nag said the bonds were bought “as per instructions from the government” and that the company is looking for opportunities outside West Bengal.
According to a report in The Wire, in February 2024, the company declared that it had contributed Rs 40 crore to political parties through electoral bonds in the first nine months of the financial year 2023-2024. The contribution is three times its after-tax profits in the same period, which stands at Rs 13.87 crore.
15. Chennai Green Wood Private Limited
Chennai Green Woods Private Limited bought electoral bonds worth Rs 105 crore – Rs 90 crore in 2022 and Rs 15 crore in 2023. The company is owned by Ayodhya Rami Reddy, a Rajya Sabha member from the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party.
Ramky Group, the parent company of Chennai Green Wood Private Limited, faced Income Tax Department raids in July 2021.
The Ramky Group, the parent company of Chennai Green Wood Private Limited, is also part of the investigations into disproportionate assets cases against incumbent Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
16. Rungta Sons Pvt Limited
Rungta Sons Private Ltd operates in forestry, logging, and other related sectors. Incorporated in 1943, the company is classified as a non-government company.
Rungta Sons bought electoral bonds worth Rs 50 crore on April 5, 2021. After a brief hiatus of three years, on January 11, 2024, the company purchased 50 electoral bonds worth Rs 1 crore each.
In the early hours of December 7, 2023, three units of the company in Ramgarh were raided by the Income Tax Department.
17. Shirdi Sai Electricals
Hyderabad-based Shirdi Sai Electricals Limited is a manufacturer of electrical goods. It had won, among other things, a contract for fixing “smart metres” to agriculture electricity connections in farms across Andhra Pradesh.
The company faced income tax raids on December 20 2023. On January 11, 2024, the company purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 40 crore.
The raids were preceded by allegations by the Andhra Pradesh BJP that the state government had given about 2.5 lakh acres of land to several private companies, mainly Indosol Solar Pvt Ltd and Shirdi Sai Electricals, under the guise of hydro and renewable energy projects by blatantly flouting the tendering norms.
It was alleged that N Visveswara Reddy and K Ravi Kumar Reddy, who were the main promoters of Indosol Solar Pvt Ltd and Shirdi Sai Electricals, were close to Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.
18. HES Infra Private Limited
Hyderabad-based HES Infra Private Limited was raided by the Income Tax Department in February 2021. It purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 20 crore in April 2022 and Rs 2 crore in November 2023.
In November 2022, the company was blacklisted by the Madhya Pradesh government over a nine-year delay in a project. The company had won the bid in 2013 for canals to irrigate 40,050 hectares in the command area of Tons river for Rs 238.33 crore. The state government categorised the delay as “sedition”.
19. Shri Jagannath Steels & Power Limited
The company purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 11 crore in April and October 2021 and Rs 3.5 crore in January 2022.
One of the directors of the company is Prashant Kumar Ahluwalia, one of the Ahluwalia brothers who run the KJS Ahluwalia group, which deals in steel and mining. Most of its mining businesses are in Odisha.
In December 2020, the Income Tax Department zeroed in on the Ahluwalia group to unearth alleged tax evasion worth Rs 100 crore by KJS Cement Industries in Madhya Pradesh. Income tax sleuths conducted searches at premises belonging to the cement manufacturer located at Maihar, Satna, Delhi and Jaipur. In August 2020, the GST intelligence officials detected over Rs 17 crore tax evasion by KJS Cement and arrested one of its directors.
20. Kalpataru Projects International Limited
The Kalpataru Group has business interests in power transmission, engineering, and logistics across the country.
In 2023, when Rajasthan had assembly polls, Kalpataru Projects bought electoral bonds worth Rs 20 crore in April and July. However, in August, the group was raided by the Income Tax Department. During the investigation, the Income Tax Department reportedly found large-scale tax evasion and detected bogus bills worth Rs 600 crore.
Following the raids, the company’s purchase of electoral bonds reduced to Rs 5.5 crore. It bought these bonds in October 2023, two months after the raids.
21. Sun Pharma
Sun Pharma was reportedly under the scanner of GST Intelligence for alleged service tax evasion in May 2019. The company purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 10 crore on May 8, 2019, after having bought Rs 21.5 crore worth of electoral bonds in April the same year.
With inputs from Megha Mukundan.
This report is part of a collaborative project involving three news organisations – Newslaundry, Scroll, The News Minute – and independent journalists.
Project Electoral Bond includes Aban Usmani, Anand Mangnale, Anisha Sheth, Anjana Meenakshi, Ayush Tiwari, Azeefa Fathima, Basant Kumar, Dhanya Rajendran, Jayashree Arunachalam, Joyal, M Rajshekhar, Maria Teresa Raju, Nandini Chandrashekar, Neel Madhav, Nikita Saxena, Parth MN, Pooja Prasanna, Prajwal Bhat, Prateek Goyal, Pratyush Deep, Ragamalika Karthikeyan, Raman Kirpal, Ravi Nair, Sachi Hegde, Shabbir Ahmed, Shivnarayan Rajpurohit, Siddharth Mishra, Supriya Sharma, Tabassum Barnagarwala and Vaishnavi Rathore.
