The BJP received three times more donations over ₹20,000 than all other national political parties combined in 2018-19, according to an analysis by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) of the submissions made by the parties before the Election Commission (EC).
The recognised national political parties — the BJP, the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the Communist Party of India, the Communist Part of India (Marxist), the Nationalist Congress Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party — were supposed to submit details of all contributions over ₹20,000, received by September 30, 2019.
The ADR report noted that the BJP was 31 days late in its submission, the CPI(M) 21 days and the CPI three days.
The national parties declared a total of ₹951.66 crore in such donations in 2018-19 and much of the amount — ₹742.15 crore — was declared by the BJP.
“The donations declared by the BJP is more than three times the aggregate declared by the Congress, NCP, CPI, CPI(M) and the Trinamool for the same period. The BSP declared that the party did not receive any donations above ₹20,000 during FY 2018-19, as it has been declaring for the past 13 years,” the ADR report stated.
Compared to the previous financial year 2017-18, the national parties’ declared donations increased by 103% in 2018-19, which was an election year. Donations to the BJP increased from ₹437.04 crore in 2017-18 to ₹742.15 crore in 2018-19 and those to the Congress increased from ₹26.658 crore to ₹148.58 crore.
The ADR found that the bulk of donations to the parties came from Maharashtra among States and corporate or business sectors when looking at the category of donors. The national parties received a total of ₹548.22 crore from donors in Maharashtra, followed by ₹141.42 crore from Delhi and ₹55.31 crore from Gujarat.
Over 92% of the total donations, worth ₹876.11 crore, came from the corporate or business sector, while 3,509 individual donors gave ₹71.407 crore or 7.5% of the total. Out of the 1,776 donations made by corporate or business sector, the BJP received 1,575 donations totalling ₹698.092 crore. The Congress got ₹122.5 crore from 122 donations from the corporate or business sector.
The top donor was the Tata Group-controlled Progressive Electoral Trust, which gave a total of ₹455.15 crore to the BJP, the Congress, and the Trinamool.
