Birla clarifies political donations by law

Group claims payments were made by trust under Companies Act only to parties registered with Election Commission

Reacting to a media report on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) handing a diary to the Supreme Court that listed an estimated 1,000 payments by an Aditya Birla Group company to politicians and members of Parliament, the group spokesperson said it was by a trust set up under the Companies Act by companies for donations to parties.

The diary was recovered by the CBI, probing the coal-block allotment case. It had raided Aditya Birla Group firms on October 16. “The contributing companies, after serious deliberations and based on the best international practice in this regard, decided to create General Electoral Trust in 1998,” said the company in a statement issued on Friday. “Its sole purpose is of making contributions to various parties or individuals nominated by parties, and to independent candidates standing for Parliamentary or state Assembly polls.”

By the statement, the trust makes contributions only to those parties or candidates registered with the Election Commission. It said all the contributions were duly accounted for and reflected in the audited published accounts of the companies.

It had filed an FIR naming Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla and former Coal Secretary P.C. Parekh for having allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy to facilitate the partial allocation of an Odisha coal block to the group’s subsidiary Hindalco Industries about eight years ago. The investigating agency alleged, in its FIR, that the Coal Ministry Screening Committee’s recommendation that the block be allocated to public sector units (PSUs) was, in a way, circumvented to “accommodate” aluminium major Hindalco.