New Delhi:
'Lottery king' Santiago Martin's Future Gaming and Hotel Services – which emerged as the largest buyer 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 abolished electoral bond system, which allowed anonymous and unlimited donations to political parties, Election Commission data showed.
Future Gaming bought electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore, of which almost 37 percent went to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam or DMK. Megha Engineering (Rs 105 crore), India Cements (Rs 14 crore) and Sun TV (Rs 100 crore) were other major donors to the DMK, which was one of the few political parties to reveal the identities of donors.
New data on electoral bonds
The Election Commission today made public new data on electoral bonds, which it had submitted to the Supreme Court in sealed covers and was later asked to place in the public domain. These details are believed to be from the period before April 12, 2019. Details of electoral bonds issued after this date were made public by the poll panel last week.
Political parties had kept electoral bond data in a sealed cover as directed by the Supreme Court's interim order dated April 12, 2019, the poll panel said in a statement.
According to the data, the ruling BJP was the largest recipient (Rs 6,986.5 crore) of the bonds since they were introduced in 2018. The Trinamool Congress was the second largest 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 largest recipient.
Who is Santiago Martin?
Santiago Martin's Future Gaming and Hotel Services bought electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore between 2019 and 2024 – 40% more than the next highest donor, according to data the Election Commission uploaded on its website on Thursday.
Mr. Martin built an empire from lottery to real estate as a teenager by selling lottery tickets. He worked as a teenage laborer in Myanmar to support his family and returned to India in the late 1980s and started his business career in Coimbatore, according to his nonprofit Martin Charitable Trust.
His two-digit lottery became popular in the region and Mr. Martin expanded to other states and eventually to neighboring Bhutan and Nepal, where he had a monopoly on lottery distribution, according to his website.
Over the years, investigation services have searched his business premises and seized property in connection with cases against him. His appeal against the seizure of property by the Enforcement Directorate was rejected last year.
Mr Martin has denied wrongdoing. His conglomerate, Martin Group, said in October that the group and its companies obeyed the law and that Mr Martin was India's highest taxpayer in the financial year to March 2003.
What is the issue of electoral bonds?
The Supreme Court struck down the electoral bonds scheme in a landmark judgment last month, terming it “unconstitutional” and ordering the State Bank of India (SBI), the authorized financial institution under the scheme, to submit the details of the bonds to the Election Commission lay. from India.
The bank was first asked to submit the details before March 6, but approached the Supreme Court seeking an extension till June 30. However, the court rejected the request and ordered the bank to make the details public before the close of business hours on March 12. It also asked the poll body to publish the information on its website by March 15.