New Delhi: Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited, a Hyderabad-based company with a paid-up capital of Rs 156 crore, purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 966 crore, becoming the second highest donor since April 2019.
Megha Group, owned by Krishna Reddy, has its fingers in many Central and State governments’ projects, the biggest being the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project on the Godavari river in Telangana, touted as the world’s biggest. CAG had pointed out widespread irregularities in the scheme and found that it caused glaring loss to the exchequer.
The company has been under the spotlight for being favoured for the state’s infrastructure projects, particularly Reddy’s closeness with former Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao.
It had won the contract to execute the Zojila Tunnel project after emerging as the lowest bidder for the project, winning praise from Union minister Nitin Gadkari for the surprisingly low bid. Megha Group also won a defence project worth Rs 500 crore to supply radio relay containers.
The electoral bonds data released by the Election Commission under the Supreme Court orders also shows another company belonging to MEIL, Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited, too has made significant donations.
Western UP Power Transmission Company Limited, the seventh-highest purchaser of electoral bonds, is a power transmission company laying transmission lines across Western Uttar Pradesh. It has bought electoral bonds worth Rs 220 crore.
Two other Megha Group companies, SEPC Power and Evey Trans Private Limited donated Rs 40 and Rs 6 crore through electoral bonds between April 2019 and January 2024, taking the combined electoral bond donation of the Megha group to Rs 1,232 crore.
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited has consistently bought electoral bonds through the years: Rs 130 crore in 2019, Rs 20 crore in 2020, Rs 100 crore in 2021, Rs 223 crore in 2022 and Rs 415 crore in 2023.
In October 2019, Income Tax officials carried inspections at Megha Engineering and Infrastructure’s office in Hyderabad. The group denied that it’d been raided and maintained these were “routine inspections”. Its electoral bond donations declined considerably in the two years after the action by the Income Tax department.
The Western UP Power Transmission Company purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 190 crore in 2023 and Rs 30 crore in 2024.
