The mother lode of submissions by political parties on electoral bonds, uploaded by the Election Commission on Sunday, bears out the adage that the rich protect the sources of their wealth better than the poor.

Parties like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Janata Dal Secular (JDS), Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and in parts the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Janata Dal United (JDU), identified their electoral bond donors.

The biggest beneficiaries, beginning with the BJP and followed by Trinamul and the Congress, remained mum.

The Left parties reiterated their stand against the electoral bonds in their submissions, having taken none. The Bahujan Samaj Party and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen too wrote in their submissions that they hadn’t taken any bond money.

The JDU and Trinamul pleaded not just anonymous donation but also anonymous delivery — through drop boxes or envelopes left at their offices — as the reason for their silence on (all or some of) the donors.

However, the bond revelations have not yet become the arsenal against the BJP that the Opposition parties hoped they would. They have now set their hopes on the apex court order that demanded the SBI provide the serial numbers of the bonds, which can link the donors to the recipients.

Sunday’s upload — some 1,270 computer files, and even the images of the envelopes they were submitted in — are submissions that the parties had given to the Election Commission in sealed covers. The commission had given them to the Supreme Court, which last week gave them back to the poll panel to publish.

The court had asked for the names of the donors as well, against which the bigger beneficiaries stuck to their ground that this was beyond the scope of the law as it stood when they received the bonds.

The amounts earned from the bonds by the parties — 24 parties cashed a combined Rs 12,769 crore in the last six years — were roughly known from the political parties’ accounts. It was also known that the BJP received almost 55 per cent of this wealth — Rs 6,986.5 crore, according to its filings.

Sunday’s data gives some insight into who these donors were — from the crumbs that fell off the high table thanks to the disclosures by the smaller parties.

The biggest bond donor — lottery “king” Santiago Martin who bought bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore through his Future Gaming and Hotel Services — gave Rs 509 crore of it to Tamil Nadu’s ruling DMK. It isn’t yet known whom the rest went to.

Martin faces probes by several central agencies. A former wage worker, he forged political bonds with every other party in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and his son is in the BJP.

The other major donors to the DMK, which earned Rs 656.5 crore from these bonds, are Megha Engineering and Infrastructure (Rs 105 crore), India Cements (Rs 14 crore) and the pro-DMK Sun TV (Rs 100 crore).

The Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure was the biggest donor to the JDS — Rs 50 crore of the party’s bond kitty of Rs 89.75 crore came from the construction firm that has projects across India.

In its submission to the poll panel last year, the BJP had said: “The Electoral Bonds were introduced with the aim of bringing only accounted for funds in political funding while protecting the donors from any consequences, therefrom.

“It is duly submitted that as per the applicable laws stated above, the Party is not required to maintain the names and particulars of the donors of the Electoral Bonds and as such the Party has not maintained these particulars.”

Trinamul, the next biggest beneficiary with Rs 1,397 crore from the bonds, told the poll panel: “Further, most of these bonds were sent to our office and dropped in the drop box or sent through messengers from various persons who wished to support our party, many of whom prefer to remain anonymous.”

The JDU revealed last week that it had received Rs 3 crore in bonds from Bharti Airtel and Shree Cement. However, in 2019, it had offered an unusual excuse: “Somebody came to our office on 03-04-2019 at Patna and handed over a sealed envelope and when it was opened we found a bunch containing 10 Electoral Bonds of Rupees One Crore each.”

The Congress received Rs 1,334 crore from the bonds; the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, Rs 1,322 crore; and the Biju Janata Dal, Rs 944.5 crore.

Reuters reported last week that the Covid vaccine maker, Serum Institute of India, had donated Rs 502.5 crore to the BJP through the Prudent Electoral Trust in 2022. The undivided NCP’s filings reveal that SII owner Cyrus Poonawala had contributed to it as well, donating Rs 3.75 crore through bonds in 2019.

Last month, Sharad Pawar, who leads a splinter group of the party, demanded a Bharat Ratna for Poonawala despite the businessman publicly calling for Pawar to retire when the party split last year. Some bonds are unshakeable.

Additional reporting by PTI