BJP leads in donations of over ₹20,000 from unknown sources: ADR

Eighty-eight per cent of the donations of over ₹20,000 made to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the year 2016-17 was from unknown sources, a new analysis by poll watchdog Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch has found.

The ruling party declared a total of ₹532.27 crore through 1,194 donations of over ₹20,000 during the period, out of which ₹464.84 crore were collected under ‘Voluntary Contributions’. These contributions formed 99.98% of BJP’s total income from unknown sources, as per the new finding.

Overall, the total income of parties from unknown sources during the period was ₹710.80 crore, which constituted 45.59% of the total income of the national parties from known and unknown sources across the country. Just under ₹850 crore, or 54%, of the total income of these parties came from known sources.

The national parties include the BJP, Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) and All India Trinamool Congress (AITC).

The findings also reflect that the BJP remained the most preferred party of choice for the Indian donor, receiving more than nine times the donations declared by the next five outfits on the list, Congress, NCP, CPI, CPM and AITC in the same period. Donations to the BJP saw an almost 600% jump over the previous year, increasing from ₹76.85 crore during 2015-16 to ₹532.27 crore during 2016-17.

On record, 708 donations to the seven parties were made by corporates, amounting to ₹563.24 crore (95.56% of total known donations), while 1,354 individuals donated ₹25.07 crore (4.25% of total donations) during 2016-17, as per the report.

A break-up of donations show that corporate houses contributed ₹515.43 crore to BJP’s kitty, while ₹16.82 crore came from 663 individual donors, as per the study.

Satya Electoral Trust was BJP’s largest donor, contributing nearly 95%, or ₹265.12 crore, of the party’s known funds. The same trust donated just ₹13.2 crore to Congress.

Congress, on the other hand, declared receiving ₹41.90 crore of over-₹20,000 donations during 2016-17, as per ADR, which also says that ₹36.06 crore out of the total donations were contributed by corporates, while ₹5.84 crore were through 501 individual donors.

Among its major observations, the ADR finding notes that the BJP collected ₹1.54 crore from 26 donations without declaring the donors’ addresses and mode of payments. Congress, on the other hand, collected ₹1.69 crore from 88 donations but failed to provide PAN details of donors.

The analysis also found that most of the political donors were based out of Delhi, followed by Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

As a major recommendation, the ADR said that the national and regional political parties must provide all information on their finances under the Right to Information Act.