Torrent Group buys Rs 184 crore electoral bonds, lion’s share of Rs 137 crore goes to BJP

Last week, we reported on how the Torrent Group, whose chairman emeritus Sudhir Mehta is close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 184 crore between May 2019 and January 2024.

After the Election Commission published additional data on its website last night, we now know that Rs 137 crore of those bonds were encashed by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The bonds were purchased by Torrent Power and Torrent Pharmaceuticals.

Through its purchase of bonds, Torrent Power donated Rs 76 crore to the BJP, Rs 3 crore to the Shiv Sena, Rs 3.5 crore to the Nationalist Congress Party, Rs 7 crore to the Aam Aadmi Party, and Rs 17 crore to the Congress. 

Torrent Pharmaceuticals donated Rs 61 crore to the BJP, Rs 1 crore to the AAP, Rs 5 crore to the Congress, Rs 50 lakh to the Sikkim Democratic Front, Rs 7 crore to the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha, and Rs 3 crore to the Samajwadi Party.

In total, both companies together donated Rs 137 crore to the BJP and Rs 22 crore to Congress.

The group also donated money to the BJP outside of electoral bonds. Between May and October 2019, Torrent Power and Torrent Pharmaceuticals donated a total of Rs 22 crore to the saffron party. The Torrent group as a whole donated Rs 9 crore to the BJP in 2021, Rs 43 crore in 2022, and Rs 50 crore in 2024.

Newslaundry previously reported that the group was granted an exemption from paying property tax of Rs 285 crore by the Devendra Fadnavis government in 2019. Chairman Mehta was part of Modi’s clique of industrialists that travelled with him to Japan and Australia. He was also a part of a group that defended Modi soon after the Gujarat riots. See all details here.

In November 2021, the union cabinet chaired by PM Modi approved the formation of a special purpose vehicle to privatise electricity distribution in Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Torrent Group was the highest bidder and acquired 51 percent stake in the power distribution companies in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.

In January 2024, the Torrent group signed four memorandums of understanding with the Gujarat government to invest Rs 47,350 crore in power distribution, green hydrogen and solar energy in the state. 

A month later, Modi laid the foundation stone for Torrent’s four power projects in Uttar Pradesh at an investment of about Rs 25,000 crore. The projects included two pumped storage hydro projects, a solar power plant, and a pilot green hydrogen production facility.

In March 2024, Torrent was awarded a contract by the NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam to supply 388 million units of electricity from its distribution generation plan in Gujarat’s Dahej.

This report is part of a collaborative project involving three news organisations – Newslaundry, Scroll, The News Minute – and independent journalists.

Project Electoral Bond includes Aban Usmani, Anand Mangnale, Anisha Sheth, Anjana Meenakshi, Ayush Tiwari, Azeefa Fathima, Basant Kumar, Binu Karunakaran, Dhanya Rajendran, Divya Aslesha, Jayashree Arunachalam, Jisha Surya, Joyal George, M Rajshekhar, Maria Teresa Raju, Nandini Chandrashekar, Neel Madhav, Nikita Saxena, Parth MN, Pooja Prasanna, Prajwal Bhat, Prateek Goyal, Pratyush Deep, Ragamalika Karthikeyan, Raman Kirpal, Ravi Nair, Rokibuz Zaman, Sachi Hegde, Safwat Zargar, Shabbir Ahmed, Shivnarayan Rajpurohit, Siddharth Mishra, Sumedha Mittal, Supriya Sharma, Tabassum Barnagarwala and Vaishnavi Rathore.