‘White money’: Biocon boss Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw says electoral bonds bought in personal capacity, firm not involved

Biocon Ltd Executive Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw on Monday clarified that she had purchased electoral bonds, which she donated to JDS and other parties, in her personal capacity. 

“Biocon did not make any political donations,” Shaw posted on X.  The Election Commission on Sunday made public the declarations received from political parties on electoral bonds. 

JD(S) is one of a few regional parties that have revealed the names of those who donated to them via electoral bonds. 

In 2018, the party had secured ₹1 crore from Infosys Technologies, ₹22 crore from the Embassy Group, ₹25 lakh from Health Care Global Enterprises, and ₹50 lakh from Biocon.

Shaw, purchased bonds worth Rs 6 crore in her personal capacity.  Top purchaser of electoral bonds Future Gaming and Hotel Services donated Rs 509 crore to Tamil Nadu’s ruling party DMK through the now-scrapped payment mode, the Election Commission’s data showed on Sunday.

The donations given by Future Gaming, whose owner, “lottery king” Santiago Martin, has been under the scanner of Enforcement Directorate (ED), accounted for more than 77 per cent of the total receipts from electoral bonds of Rs 656.5 crore disclosed by the DMK.

Since most political parties have not fully disclosed the names of the donors, it was not known who were the beneficiaries of the balance Rs 859 crore worth bonds purchased by Future Gaming.

The disclosure is part of the data dump pertaining to a total of 523 recognised and non-recognised political parties made public by the Election Commission (EC) on the Supreme Court’s orders. This followed another dataset published by the EC last week based on the information submitted by the State Bank of India (SBI), the sole bank authorised to sell and redeem electoral bonds.