Electoral Bonds Disclosure: This Is No 'Gotcha' Moment For Media, Opposition

The Supreme Court verdict on electoral bonds, which has now achieved full disclosure, is unlikely to throw much light on whether or not there was any linkage between favours (or disfavours) and donations to political parties from corporations.

In fact, the negatives right now outweigh the positives, since donations to political parties will now go underground, and corporations have come to realise that a law guaranteeing anonymity means nothing once an issue reaches those people in black robes.

But it is still worth drawing a few conclusions from the disclosures and the kind of linkages between donors and donees that have emerged so far.

The most interesting case is that of the biggest donor to state parties — lottery king Future Gaming. Of the Rs 1,365 crore donated by this lottery company, the bulk went to Trinamool Congress (Rs 542 crore) and DMK (Rs 503 crore). The BJP was at No 4, with around Rs 100 crore.

What explains this skew towards regional parties when lotteries come in the Union legislative list at No 40. The states can, under item 34 in their own list of legislative powers, regulate betting and gambling.

Lotteries are governed by two central laws and rules, the Lotteries (Regulation) Act, 1998, and the Lotteries (Regulation) Rules, 2010.

However, states have the power to ban them or allow them. As of now, 13 states, including seven in the North East, West Bengal, Punjab, Goa, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, have legally allowed them.

Lotteries are banned in Andhra, but the YSR Congress still got Rs 154 crore from Future Gaming. Is this a hint of a future easing of the ban in the state? It will be watched with great interest.

So what explains the huge inflows from the lottery king to so many state parties? The answer clearly must lie in the fact that they can ban them, as the Supreme Court upheld in a case some nine years ago.

It held that the right to sell a lottery was not a fundamental right and states had the right to ban them. It is possible to suggest that state parties can collect donations if they either threaten to ban them or give them more space in their territories.

The next big donor is the infrastructure player, Megha Engineering and Infra Group, which donated Rs 1,186 crore, over half of it to the BJP (Rs 664 crore), not to speak of significant sums to the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) of Telangana and Congress. The DMK too gets Rs 85 crore.

In infrastructure, both Centre and states play a role, with both having the power to award contracts that may (or may not) be based on favours. Many permissions have to be obtained at the state level.

During the UPA regime, undivided Andhra Pradesh-based infrastructure groups (GMR, GVK, Lanco Infra, et al) won huge central projects, and it was hinted that the influence of YS Rajashekara Reddy — the man who gave the largest number of Lok Sabha seats to the Congress — had a lot of do with this largesse.

But what is interesting is that even as the BRS started ruling Telangana, infrastructure groups like Megha continue to flourish. The large donations to BJP at the Centre, and the Congress and BRS can be surmised to be a key lubricant enabling this company to grow unhindered in many states. But there may be no way to draw a direct link between donations and favours, or even with enforcement raids.

The BJP is the largest recipient of funds from the Keventers Group, the Aditya Birla Group and a company called QwikSupply, a logistics chain with some linkages to the Reliance Group.

The mining and energy resources group Vedanta gave chunks to the BJP,  Congress and Biju Janata Dal (in Odisha), and telecom major Bharti to BJP. Kolkata-based Sanjeev Goenka Group made a huge contribution to Trinamool and BJP,  the two biggest parties in West Bengal.

This is as I have predicted, for even if there is some degree of correlation between raids and donations, correlation is not causation.

The following conclusions can, however, be drawn.

First, companies with large stakes in projects or businesses cannot afford to antagonise the governments in power, whether in Centre or states. So most of them may be willing to pay for being left alone. They may not need a door knock from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to pay up.

Second, one cannot rule out a link between donations and specific favours to companies, but this will be very difficult to establish. Also, political parties have become smarter. They first make the right choice, and then send hints about donations to the winning bidders. Few parties award large contracts, that are hotly debated in the media and courts, to dubious vendors.  

Third, one has missed out the elephant in the room. It is presumptuous to believe that only parties in power can garner donations. In fact, political parties can influence donors even when they are not in power, for they can make life difficult for them through public protests and threats of revenge if they do come to power. So smaller donations do go to parties that demonstrate nuisance value.

Fourth, transparency is a good thing in political donations, but the Supreme Court verdict giving it retrospective effect has probably done more harm than good. 

A Times of India report, which took the X-ray to disclosures today (22 March), came to the conclusion that donors gave money across the board, but there were no apparent and direct links to any enforcement cases.

This is no "gotcha" moment for a media salivating at the prospect of detailed disclosures. What we have is a finger pointing in all directions.