Read the previous instalments of our political funding investigation here.

The Supreme Court’s verdict quashing the electoral bonds scheme cited the Election Commission of India’s concerns about the scope of shell companies being used to donate to political parties.

Newslaundry has now found that at least four firms, listed among over 300 entities named as shell companies by the Securities and Exchange Board of India in 2017, had donated a total of Rs 4.94 crore directly to the BJP between financial years 2013-14 and 2022-23. 

While two of them had made the donations to BJP before they were listed as shell firms, all four are yet to be removed from SEBI’s list of shell companies which were slapped with trading restrictions.

That’s not all. 

Nearly a month after we reported an ostensible pattern between central agency action and Rs 335 crore in donations to the BJP by 30 companies during the last five financial years, we have now found 11 other companies – which donated Rs 62.27 crore to the BJP from 2016-17 to 2022-23, and faced central agency action during the same period.

Newslaundry made several attempts to contact each of these 11 companies via email. In cases where we couldn’t establish the status of the central agency action against them, we asked the companies about the status of the cases and sent questionnaires to the respective agencies. Their comments will be added to this report if they respond.

The four shell firms