A V Birla Group To Set Up Political Fund

Taking a leaf out of the Tatas book, the Aditya Birla group has decided to set up an electoral fund for political contributions. Called the General Electoral Trust, the fund will be administered by a board of trustees, including former ambassador to Romania Julio Ribeiro, former Exim Bank CMD Tarjani Vakil and E B Desai, senior partner, Mulla & Mulla and Craige Blunt & Caroe.

All Aditya Birla group companies will contribute to the fund. Flagship Grasim Industries will be the settlor and will initiate the setting up of the fund. Along with other group companies like Hindalco, Indian Rayon and Indo-Gulf Fertilisers, Grasim will contribute initially to the fund.

 

Grasim Industries executive president S K Saboo said donations would be confined to political parties registered with the Election Commission. All donations would be made by cheque, he added.

Apart from the board of trustees, the trust will be advised by an advisory board headed by former Chief Justice P N Bhagwati. The advisory board will consist of Hindalco president Askaran Agarwala, Indo-Gulf Fertilisers managing director B N Puranmalka, Indian Rayon senior president D D Rathi and Saboo himself.

Puranmalka said all the other group companies would also be allowed to contribute to the fund. If the funds are not distributed for six years, they will be refunded to the group companies.

Agarwala said the funds corpus would be decided soon. Discussions will be held with various unit heads and the exact amount to be contributed by each company and unit head will be fixed, he added.

The AV Birla group will thus become the second corporate group in India to set up an electoral fund to contribute to political parties. A similar fund was set up by the Tata group last year.