BJP Got 12 Times More Donations Than Other Parties, Thanks To Corporates

Donations made to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2017-18 are 12 times the aggregate donations received by all other national political parties, as per declarations made before the Election Commission. And these are just the declared donations.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on January 16, 2019 released its report on the donations above Rs 20,000 received by national political parties in 2017-18.

The BJP, predictably, received the highest amount in donations — Rs 437.04 crore from 2,977 donations.

Of this Rs 437.04 crore, a staggering Rs 400.23 crore—or nearly 92% —came from 1,207 donations made by the corporates, while 1,759 individual donors donated Rs 36.71 crore. Still wondering why the BJP has been facing allegations of helping “crony businessmen” by the Opposition? 

Meanwhile, the Indian National Congress (INC) received Rs 26.658 crore from 777 donations, as declared by the party. As for corporate donations, the Congress received Rs 19.298 crore through 53 donors from the business sectors, while 724 individual donors contributed Rs 7.36 crore.

No wonder the Modi government has the wherewithal to spend Rs 5,000 crore over the past four-and-a-half years solely on advertisements and publicity through different kinds of media, as revealed by an RTI application in October last year.

This explains how the BJP could manage to appear 22,099 times in advertisements on television channels in the run-up to the five Assembly elections last year — it is a measure of public disillusionment that the party still did not manage to win any of those elections.

The ADR report noted that the total donations made to the national parties during 2017-18 decreased by 20%, or Rs 119.49 crore, from the previous financial year.

For example, in 2016-17, the BJP had received Rs 532.27 crore, which decreased by 18% to Rs 437.04 crore during 2017-18.

Donations to the Congress also decreased from Rs 41.90 crore during 2016-17 to Rs 26.658 crore during 2017-18 — a decline of 36%.

The donor who gave the highest amount to the BJP in 2017-18 is Prudent Electoral Trust (earlier known as Satya Electoral Trust) — donating a total of Rs 154.30 crore to BJP. This amounts to 35% of the total funds received by the party.

Prudent Electoral Trust also donated to the Congress—but only Rs 10 crore, which amounted to 38% of the total funds received by the party.

Among all the national-level political parties—BJP, Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Nationalist Congress Party, Communist Party of India, All India Trinamool Congress, and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)—the BSP is the only one that declared that it did not receive donations above Rs 20,000 during 2017-18, “as it has been declaring for the past 12 years,” noted the report. 

The ADR report made the observation that incomplete disclosure had been made by the parties regarding donations. “There is still ambiguity in details of donations declared by the National Parties for FY 2017-18,” the report said.