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Electoral bonds: After raids by central agencies, these 21 companies purchased bonds worth crores

Scroll reported electoral-bond purchases by 21 companies and related entities alongside agency actions. Here are the disclosed examples, key caveats and legal context.
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A March 15, 2024 investigation by Scroll’s Project Electoral Bond reported a sequence of agency actions and electoral-bond purchases involving 21 companies and related entities. Its reporting identifies purchases and timelines; the sequence alone does not show that an agency action caused a purchase, that a company paid under pressure, or that any named company committed an offence.

What the report establishes—and what it does not

Scroll presented an editorially selected list of companies and related entities whose bond purchases followed or overlapped with reported action by central agencies. The list is not an official, comprehensive roster of companies investigated by those agencies. Nor does a purchase after a search, raid, or attachment establish a causal link between the events.

The figures and timelines below are attributed to Scroll’s March 15, 2024 reporting, not presented as an independent audit of the underlying bond records. Agency searches, asset attachments, allegations, company denials, and court findings are different kinds of information. The Supreme Court’s later ruling on the electoral-bond scheme was not a finding against the companies named in the investigation.

Which companies did Scroll name?

The investigation named these 21 companies or company cases. Some entries refer to groups or related entities, rather than establishing that the named parent company itself made every purchase:

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  • Future Gaming and Hotel Services
  • Megha Engineering and Infrastructure
  • Vedanta
  • Hetero group companies
  • Hero MotoCorp
  • Rashmi group companies
  • DLF
  • Dr Reddy’s Laboratories
  • Navayuga Engineering
  • Utkal Alumina
  • Grasim
  • UPL
  • Aurobindo Pharma
  • IFB Agro
  • Chennai Green Woods
  • Rungta Sons
  • Shirdi Sai Electricals
  • HES Infra
  • Shri Jagannath Steels & Power
  • Kalpataru Projects
  • Sun Pharma

What purchase and agency timelines did the report describe?

Scroll’s account gives specific details for several illustrative cases. The table reflects only the figures and chronology stated in the reporting summarized here; it does not fill gaps with estimates.

Company or entity Agency action described Bond purchases reported by Scroll Important qualification
Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited Scroll described Enforcement Directorate action and asset attachment during 2022–23. Rs 1,368 crore between October 2020 and January 2024. The purchase span and agency-action span overlap; timing does not establish why the company bought bonds.
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited Scroll reported an income-tax raid in October 2019. Rs 980 crore between April 2019 and November 2023. The report also listed purchases by three related entities. The related entities’ purchases should not be attributed to Megha Engineering itself without entity-level records.
Hero MotoCorp Scroll reported income-tax searches in March 2022. Rs 20 crore in October 2022. The report noted that Hero MotoCorp denied claims reported at the time concerning alleged bogus expenses and cash transactions.
Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Scroll described November 2023 tax searches involving an employee. The report said the company made purchases after those searches, including Rs 31 crore just after them. The searches described involved an employee; this should not be recast as a raid on the company itself.
IFB Agro Scroll reported a GST search at the company’s Noorpur plant in June 2020. The purchase amount and dates are not stated in the account summarized here. Scroll quoted joint executive chairman Bikramjit Nag as saying bonds were bought “as per instructions from the government,” attributing the quote to the company’s AGM recording.
DLF group entities Scroll reported an Enforcement Directorate raid in November 2023. Scroll said DLF group entities stopped buying bonds after the raid; the amount and date of any final purchase are not stated in the account summarized here. This is an exception to any implication that every company continued buying after agency action. The report refers to group entities.

The reported details for the other named companies are not reproduced in this table, so no amount or company-specific agency timeline should be inferred for them from the list alone.

How does the Supreme Court ruling relate to these purchases?

On February 15, 2024, the Supreme Court of India declared the Electoral Bond Scheme unconstitutional. It held that the non-disclosure of political funding violated citizens’ right to information under Article 19(1)(a). It also held that the Finance Act 2017 amendments allowing unlimited corporate political contributions were arbitrary and violated Article 14. The Court directed the issuing bank to stop issuing bonds and ordered disclosure of purchaser and redemption details.

“The issuing bank shall herewith stop the issuance of Electoral Bonds.”

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— Supreme Court of India, Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India, paragraph 219(a), February 15, 2024.

The Court’s March 11, 2024 order described the disclosure period as April 12, 2019 through February 15, 2024. On March 15, the Court recorded that the State Bank of India had not disclosed the bonds’ alphanumeric numbers and directed the Election Commission to upload the data by March 17. Scroll’s warning that buyers could not yet be matched to recipients because unique identifiers were missing described the position at the time of its March 15 publication. That publication-time caveat should not be treated as a current assessment of all later disclosures or as a completed buyer-recipient matching exercise.

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What readers should take away from the chronology

  • Scroll reported company purchases alongside agency actions, but dates alone do not prove that one caused the other.
  • Amounts and actions may relate to a group company, affiliate, or employee; they should not automatically be assigned to a parent company.
  • The report records a denial by Hero MotoCorp of claims about alleged expenses and cash transactions; those claims should not be described as established findings.
  • The Supreme Court’s constitutional decision addressed the scheme and disclosure rules, not the guilt or liability of the named purchasers.

Sources: Scroll.in, Project Electoral Bond collaboration, “After raids by central agencies, these 21 companies purchased bonds worth crores,” published March 15, 2024; Supreme Court of India, Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India, 2024 INSC 113 (February 15, 2024); Supreme Court order, 2024 INSC 195 (March 11, 2024); Supreme Court order on alphanumeric-number disclosure (March 15, 2024).

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