Hyderabad: India’s richest electoral trust Prudent Electoral Trust donated Rs 25 crore to the Telugu Desam in 2018-2019, the largest received from a single entity.
A TD statement of accounts submitted to the Election Commission on July 30 showed the party received Rs 26.17 crore that year of which Rs 25 crore came from Prudent.
The TRS and YSRC are yet to submit their reports for FY2018-19.
Prudent Electoral Trust was incorporated a year before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and was in the news for contributing Rs 144 crore (about 82 per cent) of its total Rs 169 crore FY 2018 income to the BJP.
It gave Rs 10 crore to the Congress and Rs 5 crore to the Biju Janata Dal in the same year. This is probably the first time the TD has received funds from Prudent and of such magnitude.
Located at Bahadur-shah Zafar Marg in New Delhi, it was earlier known as Satya Electoral Trust. One of the richest of the 22 electoral trusts registered in India, Prudent is set up by a corporate giant.
Many companies rou-te money to political parties through Prud-ent. The body submits its list of contributors to the Election Commi-ssion of India. For FY 2018, their major do-nors were DLF Group (Rs 52 crore), Bharti Group (Rs 33 crore), UPL (Rs 22 crore), Torrent Power (Rs 20 crore).
The current year’s list will be submitted by September 2019, said Prof. Jagdeep Chhokar, member of the Asso-ciation of Democratic Reform.
The company has two directors. The longest-serving directors on board are Mukul Goyal and Ganesh Venkata-chalam. Mr Goyal is on the board of directors of three other companies.
Politicians who contributed were MP Raghu Ram Krishna Raju, who recently joined the YSRC after leaving the TD, YSRC MP Srinivasulu Reddy Magunta from Ongole, TD leader Narendra Varma Raju Vegesana, former AP government representative in Delhi and former MP Rama Mohan Rao Kambhampati.
