The who’s who of mining are funding India’s political parties

There are strings attached to every charity! A list released by Delhi-based NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), reveals that 26 of the top 50 companies, which made political donations to the Congress Party, are associated with mining of natural resources in one way or the other. These companies belong to Jindal group of industries, Adani Group of Industries, Shyam group of industries, Essar group of industries, ACC and Ambuja Cements, Vedanta group of industries, Torrent Power Ltd, Salgaoncar, Chowgule, etc. Other companies listed are service providers, and provide logistics and infrastructure to these companies dealing with power generation, cement, steel, sponge iron and export of iron ore. Thus, most of these companies require captive coal blocks, captive iron and bauxite mines. These companies are not only generous to the Congress, they are also liberally make political donations to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other political parties, and seem focused on keeping the political class happy. [caption id=“attachment_451170” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The Jindal Group alone holds control over 10 captive mines. The Jindals made a contribution of Rs 1.05 crore to the Congress. Essar has captive coal mines at Chakla and Karanpura districts in Jharkhand and its contribution to the Congress was Rs 75 lakh. ACC and Ambuja Cement companies donated Rs 1 crore and Rs 2 crore respectively to the Congress war-chest. Both belong to the same management and they too have captive coal mines at Raniganj, West Bengal. They have cement plants at Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Adani Group’s Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone Ltd donated Rs 1 crore to the Congress. The Adani group of industries also mine coal and trade in coal and oil and gas production. It has a captive coal mine at Lohara West in Wardha district, Maharashtra. In addition, the Adani Enterprises Ltd donated Rs 1.5 crore to the Congress. Gujarat based Torrent Power Limited runs gas-based and thermal power stations. It needs a mix of gas and coal for its plants. And it donated Rs 14.15 crore to the Congress. Megha Technical Engineers Pvt Ltd, which belongs to Shyam Group of Industries donated Rs 50 lakh and its sister concern Shyam DRI has a captive coal mine at Utkal in Talcher district, Orissa for power generation. There are support industries like Petrocon India Ltd, a part of Videocon’s group of companies, with interests in oil and gas. It has donated over Rs 1 crore. In addition, other companies of the Videocon group made consistent donations amounting to Rs 8.2 crore to the Congress in the last seven years. Similarly other service provider companies in the field of power generation, oil and gas, coal and iron mining are Kalyani Global Engineering (Rs 1 crore), Kalyani Steels Ltd (Rs 1 crore), Gannon Dunkerley Ltd (Rs 1 crore), Bharat Forge Ltd, a flagship company of Gannon Dunkerley (Rs 2 crore), Larsen & Toubro (Rs 3.5 crore), KSK Energy Ventures Ltd (Rs 2 crore), Infrastructure Development and Consultants India Pvt Ltd (Rs 5.5 crore) and Crompton Greaves, Avantha Group of companies, which also deal in with power and infrastructure. Interestingly, Goa-based private companies, which have roped in huge profits and are flagged by the Shah Commission for various illegalities, also figure in the list of political donators. Vedanta group stands out prominently. It’s Sterlite industries, VS Dempo Company and Sesa Ltd together donated nearly Rs 8 crore to the Congress. VM Salgaocar & brothers donated nearly Rs 2 crore. Even Chowgules, who are also mining into iron ore in Goa, gave away Rs 1.25 crore to the Congress through its Chowgule Charitable Trust. This is one occasion, when the BJP will not raise any protest or even a feeble voice against the Congress. Because many of these companies – Torrent Power (Rs 13 crore), Videocon (Rs 6.2 crore), Vedanta (Rs 3.5 crore), Ambuja Cement (Rs 2 crore) and Adani (Rs 1.5 crore), have also filled the BJP’s coffers by way of political donations. Torrent Power, Ambuja and Videocon also stand out for making generous political donations to NCP. This list gives viewers only a truncated view, because most of the political parties were clever enough not to reveal their sources of political donations. There are electoral trusts donating crores of rupees to the Congress and the BJP, which just doesn’t make any sense. What these political parties did not reveal, however, remains vital. The Congress made Rs 2,008 crore in the last seven years and it did not reveal 88 percent of its sources of funding. Roughly speaking, it only disclosed the sources, which gave away Rs 157 crore to the Congress and the origin of rest of the funds (Rs 1851 crore) remains a mystery. Similarly, BJP got Rs 994 crore, but it only gave a list of political donations made to it worth about Rs 220 crore. Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party was the cleverest of all, as it did not reveal even one source of its 484 crore income in the past seven years! BSP had shown massive increase in total income (161 per cent) between 2007 and 2009 followed by Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) (130 per cent) and the Congress (125 per cent). Mayawati-led BSP declared that it did not receive a single voluntary contribution in excess of Rs 20,000 in the past seven years. Under the law, it is not mandatory for the party to declare names of the donors who make contributions less than Rs 20,000. Assuming that people made a donation of Rs 19,999 each to BSP, over 2.42 lakh people had then made political donations to BSP! In our world of currying favour through gifts, it is hard to believe that these donations come with no strings attached.