BJP got 78% of donations to national parties in FY22 at Rs 614 cr, Congress 2nd with Rs 95 cr: ADR

Total donations above Rs 20,000 disclosed by national parties amounted to Rs 780.77 cr, says report. Corporates accounted for 89.29% of total donations declared by BJP.

File photo of BJP, Congress workers with flags of their parties in Delhi | ANI

New Delhi: The BJP received over Rs 614 crore as donation, amounting to 78 per cent of the total donations declared by all national parties in the 2021-22 financial year, according to a report released Tuesday by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

Of the Rs 614 crore received by the ruling party, about Rs 548 crore was from corporate donations received through electoral trusts or by organisations, which is more than seven times higher than the total corporate donations received by all other parties combined.

The top corporate donors to the BJP included Yashoda Super Specialty Hospital (Rs 10 crore), Pacific Exports (Rs 10.50 crore), Shreeji Shipping (Rs 10 crore) others, the ADR report shows. As for the Congress, Nuvoco Vistas Corporation Ltd. contributed Rs 15 crore.

All the top ten donations to the BJP came through the Prudent Electoral Trust which gave Rs 336.5 crore. The trust was also the top donor to the Congress with over Rs 16.50 crore.

The Congress came second in the list with over Rs 95 crore, which amounts to 12 per cent of the total donations, followed by the NCP with over Rs 57 crore and the CPI-M with Rs 10 crore.

Donations to the CPI-M and the NPEP decreased by 22 and 40 per cent, respectively. For the 16th year in a row, the BSP is the only national party which claimed that it did not receive donations above Rs 20,000.

Details were gathered about donations above Rs 20,000 after scanning the documents submitted by the parties to the Election Commission.

The survey covered the declarations provided by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the CPI-Marxist (CPI-M), All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and the National People’s Party (NPEP).

The AAP, which became the ninth national party after the Gujarat polls, was not part of this study.

BJP, Congress donation rose equally

The report revealed that donations to the BJP increased from Rs 477.55 crore during 2020-21 to Rs 614.63 crore during FY 2021-22, which is over 28 per cent hike. The Congress, too, saw a similar percentage hike (28.09 per cent) as donations went up from Rs 74.52 crore during 2020-21 to Rs 95.46 crore during 2021-22.

The corporate sector was the highest contributor with Rs 625.88 crore (80.16 per cent of total donations), while 4,506 individual donors gave away Rs 153.33 crore (19.64 per cent) to the national parties.

The BJP received over Rs 548 crore from corporate donations, almost seven times the total amount of corporate donations declared by all other national parties. Donations from corporates formed 89.29 per cent of total donations declared by BJP, the ADR report said.

Delhi contributed the most to the national political parties through donation. According to the data analysed by ADR, Rs 395.85 crore was donated to the national parties from Delhi, followed by over Rs 105.35 crore from Maharashtra and Rs 45.99 crore from Gujarat.

(Edited by Tony Rai)