Billionaire Anil Agarwal’s mining conglomerate, Vedanta.Ltd, nearly quadrupled its donations to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), contributing ₹97 crore in the fiscal 12 months ending March 2025, in accordance to its newest annual report.
Under “Miscellaneous Expenses’, Vedanta detailed the political donations as well as the management and brand fee expenses it paid to its parent, London-listed Vedanta Resources Plc.
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Political donations totalled ₹157 crore in 2024-25, up from ₹97 crore in the previous financial year.
While donations to the BJP soared, these to the Opposition Congress have been reduce to simply ₹10 crore.
The donations in fiscal 12 months April 2024 to March 2025 (FY25) included “contributions to Bharatiya Janata Party of ₹97 crore (₹26 crore in fiscal 12 months ended March 31, 2024), Biju Janata Dal of ₹25 crore (March 31, 2024: ₹15 crore), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha of ₹20 crore (March 31, 2024: ₹5 crore) and All India Congress Committee of ₹10 crore (March 31, 2024: ₹49 crore),” according to the annual report for 2024-25.
Vedanta has been one of the biggest donors to political parties.
In 2022-23, it had donated a total of ₹155 crore to political parties and ₹123 crore in FY22 (April 2021 to March 2022). Beneficiary-wise, the breakup was not provided for the previous donations.
It had, through the now-scraped electoral bonds donated, ₹457 crore to political parties in the five years of their existence starting 2017.
Electoral bonds allowed companies and individuals to donate unlimited amounts anonymously to political parties. The Supreme Court last year banned Electoral Bonds, calling them “unconstitutional”.
Vedanta’s Janhit Electoral Trust is one of the over a dozen electoral trusts floated by corporates for making donations to political parties. Other corporates that own electoral trusts include Progressive Electoral Trust of Tatas, People’s Electoral Trust of Reliance, Satya Electoral Trust of Bharti Group, MP Birla Group’s Paribartan Electoral Trust and KK Birla Group’s Samaj Electoral Trust Association. Bajaj and Mahindra also have electoral trusts.
On brand fee, Vedanta said the group has a brand license and strategic service fee agreement with Vedanta Resources Ltd for use of the brand ‘Vedanta’ and providing strategic services, which envisage payment to VRL ranging from 0.75% to 3% of the turnover of the company and certain subsidiaries.
“During the 12 months ended March 31, 2024, VRL assigned the settlement, together with a sublicensing settlement, to its wholly-owned subsidiary, VRIL, whereby the Group will fulfil its obligations underneath the settlement by way of VRIL with impact from April 1, 2024,” the annual report said.
Vedanta paid ₹2,397 crore in brand and other fees to VRIL in the 2024-25 fiscal, up from ₹2,326 crore in the previous year.
“Furthermore, the corporate has sublicensed the settlement to its subsidiary, Hindustan Zinc Ltd, at a internet sublicensing payment of 1.70 per cent of HZL’s annual consolidated turnover. The firm additionally executed a sublicensing settlement with Ferro Alloy Corporation Ltd (FACOR) at a internet sublicensing payment of two.50 per cent of FACOR’s annual consolidated turnover with impact from April 1, 2024.
“Consequently, for the year ended March 31, 2025, the Group has recorded an expense of ₹582 crore (March 31, 2024: Rs 477 crore),” Vedanta stated in the annual report.
Vedanta Resources owns 56.38% of Mumbai-listed Vedanta Ltd.
