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When India’s top court banned a controversial scheme in February 2024 that allowed individuals and corporates to make anonymous donations to political parties through opaque electoral bonds, many transparency activists hailed the judgement as a win for democracy.

Between 2018, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government introduced the electoral bonds, and when they were scrapped in 2024, secret donors funnelled nearly $2bn to parties.

More than half of that went to Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has held India’s central government since 2014, and also governs at least 20 Indian states and federally controlled territories, either directly or in coalition with allies.

In striking down the scheme, the Supreme Court said that “political contributions give a seat at the table to the contributor” and that “this access also translates into influence over policymaking”.

But two years later, data shows that big business continues to pump in millions of dollars in funding to political parties, with the BJP retaining its position as the biggest beneficiary, frequently raising serious concerns over a quid pro quo with donors.

The donors have returned to an older funding mechanism: electoral trusts. Introduced in 2013 by the Manmohan Singh government led by the Congress party that preceded Modi, the trusts, unlike bonds, require the donors to disclose their identities and the amount of money being given.

But that relative transparency is not dissuading companies from major mega-donations to parties directly positioned to benefit them through policies and contracts, an analysis of recent political funding by Al Jazeera reveals.

‘Money determines access’

In 2024-25, nine electoral trusts donated a total of $459.2m to political parties, with the BJP receiving $378.6 million — 83 percent of it. The main opposition Congress party got about $36m (8 percent), while other parties received the remaining amount.

This data is sourced from disclosures made during the first full year after the Supreme Court ban on bonds.

Two major corporations stood out, due to their significant financial scale and policy influence:  The Tata Group, founded in 1868 by Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, is a global conglomerate with more than 30 companies spanning steel, IT, automobiles, aviation, and more. Its aggregate revenue for FY 2024-25  exceeded $180bn. The Murugappa Group, founded in 1900 by A M Murugappa Chettiar as a money-lending business in Burma (now Myanmar), is a prominent Indian conglomerate with 29 businesses in engineering, agriculture, financial services and beyond. Its turnover stood at $8.53bn in 2024-25.

Documents submitted to the Election Commission of India in 2024-2025 show that the Progressive Electoral Trust, backed by 15 companies belonging to the Tata Group conglomerate, distributed approximately $110.2m to 10 political parties in the run-up to the 2024 general election.

The BJP received about $91.3m – again roughly 83 percent of the total fund – while the Congress got $9.31m, with smaller sums going to several regional parties. Tata made its contribution on April 2, 2024, while Murugappa did so on March 26, 2024.

India’s general elections began on April 19 and concluded on June 1, 2024.

The timing and scale of these donations are significant, say experts. Tata’s donations came within weeks of the government approving two semiconductor projects worth more than $15.2bn announced by the Tata Group in Gujarat and Assam – both BJP-ruled states.

The Modi government also provided additional support of about $5.3bn under India’s plans to promote semiconductor development.

Meanwhile, in February 2024, the Indian government approved a semiconductor assembly and testing facility proposed by CG Power and Industrial Solutions Ltd, a Murugappa Group company. The project, to be set up in Sanand, Gujarat, with an investment of approximately $870m, also received central and state government incentives.

In the same financial year, disclosures showed that yet another trust called Triumph Electoral Trust received $15.06m from Tube Investments of India Ltd, another Murugappa Group company. The entire money went to the BJP, with no contribution by Triumph to other parties.The scale of these donations surprised observers as the Murugappa Group had been a modest political donor over the previous decade.

“Electoral trusts may be legal, but they normalise a system where money determines access, policy, and electoral success,” Parayil Sreerag, a political strategist, told Al Jazeera. Sreerag argued that such a mechanism “favours the ruling party, marginalises smaller movements, and erodes democratic competition and public trust”.

To be sure, corporate funding in India has a long history.

The Birla group of companies was a major financier of Mahatma Gandhi in the years leading up to independence in 1947. Since then, other companies and parties have continued the practice.

“Business houses have traditionally supported ruling political parties,” G Gopa Kumar, former vice chancellor of the Central University of Kerala and a political strategist, told Al Jazeera.

India’s legal framework governing corporate donations to political parties has evolved alongside political shifts. The Companies Act, 1956, first regulated such contributions, barring government companies and young firms, while mandating disclosure of donations. Corporate funding was later banned in 1969 under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The ban was lifted in 1985.

A major overhaul came in 2013 with the introduction of Electoral Trusts and the Companies Act, 2013. The new law capped corporate donations at 7.5 percent of average net profits, required board approval, and mandated disclosure, marking a significant attempt at regulation and transparency.

But while the Modi-era electoral bonds between 2018 and 2024 drew the bulk of the criticism over electoral finance from transparency activists, the return to electoral trusts has coincided with what is, in effect, an increase in corporate funding for parties. Between 2018 and 2024, the electoral bonds led to an average of under $350m in total donations per year.

Trusts – to which corporates turned after the bonds were scrapped – donated more than $450m by contrast, in 2024-25.

“Left unchecked, it [soaring corporate funding] risks creating a duopoly between political power and corporate capital,” Sreerag said.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Tata Group, the Murugappa Group and the Election Commission of India for their responses to concerns over links between donations and influence, but it has not yet received any response.

Uncovering corruption in election funding

Transparency activists argue that the surge in corporate funding, especially for the ruling party, both reveals the access and influence enjoyed by major firms and sheds light on the disadvantages faced by smaller parties and independent candidates.

Shelly Mahajan, a researcher at the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a prominent Indian election watchdog, said unequal access to private donations undermines political participation and electoral competition.

“Despite decades of reform proposals, the nexus between money and politics persists in India due to weak enforcement and inadequate regulation,” she told Al Jazeera.

To many, the electoral bonds scheme came to epitomise that dark and cosy “nexus”.

In December, Nature magazine published a study on alleged corruption under the scheme, authored by academics Devendra Poola and Vinitha Anna John.

The authors found that newly incorporated companies made unusually large donations soon after their formation, pointing to expectations of gains from the government. In several cases, firms accused of tax evasion or other financial crimes donated after raids by India’s enforcement and investigating agencies, raising concerns of coercive political pressure: 26 entities under investigation bought bonds worth $624.7m, including $223.3m after raids by investigating agencies.

Bond purchases peaked around election cycles. That timing – around elections and after raids – was “significant”, Poola told Al Jazeera. “That sequencing is analytically difficult to dismiss as coincidence.” While the data cannot establish legal intent, Poola stressed that the pattern points to an “institutionalised quid pro quo ecosystem enabled by opacity”.

Yet critics say transparency alone does not resolve the link between public policy and political funding – as the data since the ban on electoral bonds shows.

‘What kind of democracy is this?’

Mahajan, the ADR researcher, said that in its decision to strike down the electoral bonds, the Supreme Court invoked the 2013 law on electoral trusts to reimpose a 7.5 percent cap on corporate donations based on their net profits.

Companies were ordered to disclose both the amounts and the recipients, creating greater scope for public scrutiny and detailed analysis. But that is not happening. Abhilash MR, a Supreme Court lawyer, said large corporate donations raise serious concerns, particularly under Article 14 of the Constitution of India, which guarantees political equality and administrative fairness.

He said there is mounting evidence of generous government incentives followed by large corporate donations.“When policy decisions appear calibrated to facilitate corporate funding, the very idea of a welfare state is undermined,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that proving corruption in courts remains extremely difficult.

“Temporal proximity between policy benefits and donations rarely meets the evidentiary threshold needed to trigger an independent judicial inquiry,” he said. “In such situations, accountability shifts from courtrooms to the public domain.”

Mini S, a politician from the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) party, had hoped for that shift among voters when she contested the 2024 national elections from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the southern Kerala state.

She couldn’t fund air-conditioned vehicles, so her campaign during India’s notorious summer moved through neighbourhoods on hired motorbikes and autorickshaws. She hoped to unseat Shashi Tharoor, a former UN diplomat and politician from the opposition Congress party, who had been representing Thiruvananthapuram in parliament since 2009. When the votes were counted, Mini secured just 1,109 votes, while Tharoor won by a landslide. She also forfeited her $275 security deposit.

But for Mini, the outcome was less a personal defeat than an indictment of how Indian elections are fought. Her entire campaign ran on $5,500, she said, an amount much lower than the $105,000 limit set by the Election Commission of India on expenditure by a parliamentary candidate.

“India likes to call itself the world’s largest democracy, but it’s not,” Mini told Al Jazeera. “When corporate money openly funds mainstream parties – through electoral bonds and trusts, often in clear quid pro quo arrangements – and the Election Commission stays silent, what kind of democracy is this?”

In such a scenario, Mini said, government policies “serve corporate interests, not the constitution”.

“Ordinary people are sidelined, and the marginalised are pushed further into the margins. With money of this scale in elections, anyone without corporate backing, like us, is effectively locked out of politics,” she said.

Support for James Van Der Beek’s family continues to pour in. The GoFundMe created to support them following the “Dawson’s Creek” star’s death approached $2.3 million in donations Friday morning.

Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw are among the celebrity donors who have contributed to the fundraiser organized by the late actor’s friends. The couple’s donation is listed as $25,000. Those familiar with Van Der Beek’s breakout role on the millennial teen drama know that Spielberg is Dawson Leery’s favorite director.

Originally airing from 1998 to 2003, “Dawson’s Creek” was a seminal teen drama that followed four friends growing up in a small coastal town as they navigated their dreams, relationships and various coming-of-age milestones. Van Der Beek’s Dawson was an aspiring filmmaker whose dreams were bigger than his small hometown. Along with friends Joey (Katie Holmes), Pacey (Joshua Jackson) and Jen (Michelle Williams), Dawson grappled with very relatable teen dilemmas including heartbreak, betrayal and bad decisions.

The fundraiser, which had more than 44,000 donors as of Friday morning, was organized to help support Van Der Beek’s wife and children, who “are facing an uncertain future” due to the financial strain of the late actor’s medical costs. The late actor died following a battle with colorectal cancer. Funds will be used to “help cover essential living expenses, pay bills, and support the children’s education,” the organizers wrote.

Van Der Beek revealed in 2012 that he had been paid “almost nothing” for his work on “Dawson’s Creek” and had not received any residuals from the hit show.

“There was no residual money,” he told “Today.” “I was 20. It was a bad contract. I saw almost nothing from that.”

Before his death, Van Der Beek auctioned off personal memorabilia and sold collectibles to help pay for his cancer treatments. In September, his “Dawson’s Creek” co-stars helped organize and stage a reunion fundraiser to support Van Der Beek and his family — a reunion the actor had to miss because of a virus. “Black Bird” actor Paul Walter Hauser had also been raising funds through Cameo videos and auctions to help the late actor prior to his death.

Besides Spielberg, celebrity donors to Van Der Beek’s GoFundMe also reportedly include Zoe Saldaña, Jon M. Chu, Derek Hough, Busy Philipps, Jenna Dewan and others.

Van Der Beek’s “Dawson’s Creek” colleagues have also been among the many who have shared tributes to the late actor.

“Several times today, from my heart, I’ve tried to form the words to express the beautiful brilliance of James and what his presence has meant to my life,” “Dawson’s” creator Kevin Williamson wrote Thursday in a post shared on Instagram. “But I am truly at a loss for words. I will have to trust that one day those words will come… But today, all I can think about is Kimberly and the entire Van Der Beek family.”

Holmes, meanwhile, shared a handwritten note addressed to Van Der Beek on Instagram Wednesday. She was the first of “Dawson’s Creek’s” surviving core quartet to publicly acknowledge Van Der Beek’s death.

“Thank you,” Holmes wrote in her note, which was addressed to Van Der Beek. “To share a space with your imagination is sacred — breathing the same air in the land of make believe and trusting that each others’ hearts are safe in their expression.”

In her remembrance, Holmes highlighted their shared “laughter, conversations about life, James Taylor songs” and their “adventures of a unique youth.” She also highlighted Van Der Beek’s “Bravery. Compassion. Selflessness [and] Strength.”

“I mourn this loss with a heart holding the reality of his absence and deep gratitude for his imprint on it,” wrote Holmes, who also sent love to Van Der Beek’s wife and children in her message.

Other members of the extended “Dawson’s Creek” family, including actors Chad Michael Murray, Kerr Smith and Sasha Alexander, have also been among those offering condolences and paying tribute to Van Der Beek and his family online.

“James Van Der Beek was one in a billion and he will be forever missed and i don’t know what else to say,” wrote Busy Philipps in her Instagram tribute. “He was my friend and i loved him and i’m so grateful for our friendship all these years.”

SACRAMENTO — Only one of the candidates for California governor will appear in a splashy Super Bowl ad on Sunday, though a rival has locked in a valuable spot on Animal Planet’s lighthearted, cuddly “Puppy Bowl” before the big game.

A Silicon Valley-backed independent expenditure committee booked $1.4 million in airtime on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, which will feature the big game along with NBC, and on other broadcast networks on Sunday to introduce Matt Mahan, the mayor of San José who entered the governor’s race in late January.

A 30-second ad depicts Mahan, a moderate Democrat, as a “fixer of problems” in a big city “just miles from the big game” and touts his record reducing homelessness, building housing and reducing crime.

The ad was produced by a committee run independently of Mahan’s campaign and funded mostly by Silicon Valley executives, including $1 million from Michael Seibel of Y Combinator and $500,000 each from Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill and his wife, Ashley.

“This Super Bowl ad kicks off our support for Matt Mahan’s run for governor,” said committee spokesman Matt Rodriguez. “His unmatched record on tackling crime, homelessness and housing in San José while focusing on the basics that Californians care about is very different than the old playbook of toxic politics.”

The committee has so far raised more than $3.2 million, according to Rodriguez, who provided the information about the contributors.

Other financial backers include Neil Mehta and Brian Singerman, two Bay Area venture capitalists, along with Paul Wachter, an investor who has advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and celebrity figures such as LeBron James and Dr. Dre on their business ventures.

As an independent committee, the group is barred from coordinating with Mahan and his campaign. A spokesperson for Mahan declined to comment on the committee or its game day ad.

Mahan, a moderate Democrat, has broken with Gov. Gavin Newsom on crime and other issues and is pitching himself as a pragmatist who would prioritize results over party politics or fighting with the Trump administration as Newsom has. Mahan’s campaign is not yet required to disclose donations but said it has raised more than $7 million since he entered the race, more than any candidate besides Tom Steyer, a progressive billionaire whose campaign is primarily self-funded.

Steyer, an investor turned climate activist, has already spent more than $27 million on his campaign. Most of that money went to producing and airing ads in which Steyer touts his wins supporting various ballot measures and pledges to break up utility monopolies to lower costs.

His latest ad debuts during Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl,” a pregame show that features two teams of adoptable dogs tussling over toys in a model football stadium. In the spot, a Realtor tells a couple that in order to afford a home, they might need to go back in time to 1980, “when the average home in California cost $100,000.”

With a burst of sparks, Steyer appears inside the time-traveling DeLorean from the 1985 film “Back to the Future” and says, “You shouldn’t have to go back in time to afford a home in California.” He then pledges to stop “Wall Street speculators from buying up homes” and pricing out “regular Californians.”

To have a legitimate shot at winning a governor’s race in a state as vast as California, home to some of the nation’s most costly media markets, candidates must raise millions of dollars to air ad campaigns robust enough to introduce themselves to voters or undercut their competitors.

According to campaign finance disclosures, former Rep. Katie Porter raised $6.1 million in 2025, the most of any candidate besides Steyer. But Mahan’s entry into the race has excited the tech and business interests that have until now avoided giving.

“The race is now kicked into gear,” and some candidates who have been fundraising for months — or years — “may find themselves lapped by the Mahan machine,” said Andrew Acosta, a Democratic strategist.

Though tech funders appear to be coalescing around the Silicon Valley mayor, he is “not going to come out of the gate lighting the campaign on fire because no one knows him,” Acosta said. With three months until primary ballots start hitting mailboxes, it’s a challenge for Mahan — though one that could be solved with enough money.

Steyer’s campaign criticized the wave of tech figures flocking to Mahan, saying business titans don’t spend their money without expecting something in return.

“This isn’t charity — it’s an investment so they get richer while everyone else gets priced out of California,” Steyer spokesman Kevin Liao said. “While San José remains the least affordable housing market in the world, Tom Steyer is ready to take on powerful special interests, make billionaires and corporations pay their fair share, and make California affordable for working people.”

With the threat of a proposed billionaire’s tax on California’s November ballot, new restrictions on AI and social media simmering in the Legislature and the impending exit of Gov. Gavin Newsom — who has been a reliable tech ally during his tenure — Silicon Valley leaders have made moves in recent weeks to boost their influence in California politics.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin and a handful of other CEOs recently loaded $35 million into a ballot measure committee and spent some of it on two separate efforts to lower housing costs.

Meta and Google have also ramped up spending on lobbying and super PACs in an effort to elect tech-friendly candidates and fight against AI regulation in statehouses both in California and around the country.

Not long after Pacific Palisades and Altadena had burned, Gov. Gavin Newsom summoned reporters and television cameras to Dodger Stadium. Newsom stepped behind a podium dropped within a stadium parking lot, with a commanding view of Los Angeles as the backdrop.

He was there to unveil LA Rises, a signature initiative under which the private sector and philanthropists could unite to help Southern California rebuild and recover.

The most valuable player that day: Mark Walter, the Dodgers’ chairman and controlling owner. The big announcement: Walter and two of his associated charities — his family foundation and the Dodgers’ foundation — would contribute up to $100 million as “an initial commitment” to LA Rises.

“We should clap for that,” Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson told the assembled media. “A hundred million dollars, that’s an outstanding thing.”

One year later, Newsom’s initiative has struggled to distinguish itself amid a panoply of wildfire relief efforts. LA Rises has delivered $20 million to date, including $7.8 million from Walter’s family foundation, according to Newsom’s office.

“If it’s a number of 20 million after one year, after such a severe occurrence, and with Los Angeles having the giving capacity to meet that goal, I would have expected to hear that there had been more commitments, at a minimum,” said Casey Rogers, founder of Santa Barbara-based Telea Insights, which advises philanthropists and leaders of nonprofit organizations.

“Maybe not all of those commitments would have been paid. Maybe they would have been commitments over a number of years. But it would have been closer to the goal.”

Walter stands by his pledge, Dodgers president Stan Kasten said. A representative of Newsom’s office said Walter’s pledge did not come with a timeline.

“I know we haven’t spent the full 100 yet,” Kasten said, “but this is a long-term commitment.”

Rather than solicit large donations up front and determine how to use the money later, LA Rises prefers to identify “impactful opportunities for investment” as they arise and then “coordinate financial support from a variety of private, public and philanthropic donors, including the Walter Family Foundation,” said Dee Dee Myers, director of Newsom’s office of business and economic development.

Of the Walter foundation contributions, $5 million went toward grants for impacted small business, workers and nonprofits, with $2.8 million to Pasadena City College for modernizing and expanding technical education programs to train workers that can help rebuild their own communities.

LA Rises also funded programs that include day camps and mental health intervention to children affected by the fires; streamlined architectural planning and permits for survivors wishing to rebuild; and support for Habitat for Humanity in building new homes and rebuilding damaged ones.

“The administration is incredibly grateful for any philanthropic dollars that have gone towards the rebuilding efforts in Los Angeles,” Myers said.

The competition for those dollars is fierce. The Milken Institute reported that private giving toward wildfire relief — from individuals, corporations and other entities — hit nearly $1 billion last year.

“I know there has been a lot of money that has been paid to various programs,” Kasten said, “and there has also been some rethinking about how LA Rises is deployed and what foundational money from the Dodgers is used for. We continue to work hard with a lot of groups on that tragedy.

“There are talks ongoing about a variety of programs and a variety of ways of funding things. We are still very involved with this, both with LA Rises and other entities.”

Kasten did not rule out Walter shifting some or all of his remaining funding commitment to an organization outside LA Rises.

“I don’t know exactly what entity we will be formally engaged with — or doing it separately — but we’re absolutely committed to helping out those programs that need that kind of help,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of it already, and we can do a lot more.”