Reporters Without Orders

Reporters Without Orders Ep 314: Decoding electoral bonds data, patterns of funding

Mar 23, 2024

Investigating patterns in political funding in India, decoding electoral bonds data dump. Discovering strange patterns of donations surpassing profits. Delving into the controversy of electoral bonds and implications on transparency and corruption. Exploring the significance of independent news investigations and data analysis in elections. Analyzing funding patterns and the impact of media companies on voting decisions.

28:11

Creator website

Episode guests

Prateek Goyal

Basant Kumar

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Companies donated to political parties exceeding profit growth raises concerns about timing and agency rates.

Electoral bond purchases by Torin Group linked to PM raise transparency issues in political funding practices.

Deep dives

Extent of Electoral Bond Donations to BJP Companies

The podcast discusses how 41 companies donated to BJP and faced central action, with 18 of them purchasing electoral bonds exceeding 2000 crores. This investigation followed earlier collaborations between news laundry and news minute. The companies like Pundra and SCT were involved, raising questions about the timing of the donations and agency rates, indicating potential discrepancies in the electoral bond system.

Recognition and Support for Investigative Journalism

00:25

Introduction

2min

Investigation into Electoral Bond Donations

17min

Exploring the Significance of Independent News Investigations and Electoral Bond Data Analysis

2min

Analysis of Electoral Bond Donations and Media Influence on Elections

4min

Analyzing Electoral Bonds Funding Patterns

3min

This week, host Tanishka Sodhi is joined by Newslaundry’s Prateek Goyal and Basant Kumar.

Both Prateek and Basant share their experience of investigating the patterns in political funding in India, and decoding the State Bank of India’s data dump on electoral bonds.

They discuss how they found out about “a very strange pattern” of donation to political parties, with some companies donating or lapping up their donations after raids by central agencies. In some cases, the companies’ donations even surpassed their profit growth and revenue.

Tune in.

Timecodes

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:21 - Donations to parties

00:05:18 - Electoral bonds

00:25:22 - Recommendations

Recommendations

Basant

Project Electoral Bond (Report)

Prateek

Maamla Legal Hai

Tanishka

Plunder of the Aravallis

Produced and edited by Saif Ali Ekram, and recorded by Anil Kumar.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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