The giants of India’s mining and steel conglomerates – Vedanta Limited, Rungta Sons Private Limited, Jindal Steel and Power (JSPL), Essel Mining and Industries Limited (EMIL) and Dempo — put together bought Rs 825 crore worth of electoral bonds, according to data made public by the Election Commission of India.
Of these companies, Rungta Sons Private Limited spent Rs 100 crore, Vedanta Ltd Rs 376 crore, EMIL Rs 224.5 crore, JSPL Rs 123 crore and Dempo Rs 1.5 crore.
Of the Rs 376 crore that Vedanta Ltd donated, a tranche of bonds worth Rs 98 crore was bought in the January 2022 window. This was just before the elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa. The group’s Sesa Goa company is one of the biggest iron ore mining companies in the country and it also has significant mining interests in Odisha. Vedanta has interests in iron ore, oil and gas, copper, aluminium and steel
JSPL’s mining, power and steel interests are largely concentrated in Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand. The company made all their donations between October 2022 and November 2023.
The Aditya Birla Group’s EMIL has statutory clearances pending for its Bunder Diamond project in the Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh.
Between 2019 and 2022, the EMIL purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 224.5 crore – Rs 50 crore in 2019, Rs 20 crore in 2020, Rs 104.5 crore in 2021, Rs 50 crore in 2022.
One of the country’s largest private coal miners, EMIL acquired the mining lease for Bunder Diamond project in Chhindwara district in 2019. The project has failed to take off in the face of strong local opposition.
In 2020, the Environment ministry returned the project’s application for environmental clearance, asking EMIL to secure forest and wildlife clearances first due to the proximity of the mines to the Panna tiger reserve. Subsequently, the Environment ministry raised several queries against EMIL’s proposal for forest clearance which remains pending.
Another such example is MSPL Ltd, the flagship company of Noida-based Baldota Group “with varied interests and investments in iron ore mining”, which purchased bonds worth Rs 1 crore in April 2019 and Rs 3 crore in April 2023.
In January 2022, MSPL sought a few changes in the ToR (terms of reference) it had received in November 2021 for its 5 MTPA Iron Ore Processing Plant and 3 MTPA Pellet Plant over 26.44 Ha in Karnataka’s Bellary district.
The changes sought included a nearly doubled production capacity, relaxation in dust emission norms, temporary permission to use groundwater, dropping the requirement for hydrological studies by rationalising the distance between the proposed plant and Tungabhadra river from 200 metres to 22.6 km etc. The Environment ministry amended the clearance conditions in February 2022.
At the lower end of the spectrum is GHCL Limited, another Noida-based company which purchased bonds worth Rs 50 lakh in 2019.
In September 2017, the GHCL had sought environmental clearance for modernising its soda ash factory and captive power plant in Gujarat’s Gir Somnath district. The Environment ministry dropped the proposal in November 2019 with the observation that the company did not respond to the Ministry’s queries.