Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Airtel, Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, and a lesser-known entity called Future Gaming and Hotel Services are on the list of purchasers of electoral bonds, according to the Election Commission (EC) data made public on Thursday evening.

A Tamil Nadu-based lottery firm and an Andhra Pradesh-based infrastructure company were among the top donors to political parties through electoral bonds bought between April 12, 2019 and February 15, 2024, data uploaded by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday evening showed, a day before the deadline set by the Supreme Court in the high-profile case playing out weeks before general elections.

The data, uploaded on the ECI website in two documents, showed that around 1,260 companies and individuals bought 22,217 bonds worth Rs.12,155.51 crore in this period.

In this period, 20,421 bonds worth Rs12,769.09 crore were redeemed by 23 political parties, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leading the pack with a war chest of Rs6,061 crore (47.5% of total redeemed value), followed by the Trinamool Congress with Rs1,610 crore (12.6%) and Congress with Rs1,422 crore (11.1%).

The top five buyers include Tamil Nadu-based Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR ( Rs1,208 crore), Telangana-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited ( Rs1,186 crore including Rs220 crore worth of bonds bought by its subsidiary Wester Up Power Transmission), Thane-based Qwik Supply Chain Private Limited ( Rs410 crore), Vedanta Limited ( Rs400.7 crore) and Haldia Energy Limited ( Rs377 crore).

Among other major donors were steel magnate Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, Biocon founder Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, industrialist BK Goenka, Jainendra Shah and one person going by only the first name of Monika.