Congress raised over Rs 2 crore through Donate for Desh in two days: Ajay Maken

Two days after launching its crowdfunding campaign 'Donate for Desh' in the national capital, the Congress has collected more than Rs 2 crore, with Maharashtra leading the top five donor states list. 

Speaking to the media, the new Congress treasurer Ajay Maken said among the five top donor states, Maharashtra leads the list with Rs 56 lakh. The other four states are Rajasthan (Rs 26 lakh), Delhi (Rs 20 lakh), Uttar Pradesh (Rs 19 lakh) and Karnataka (Rs 18 lakh), while Bihar has the highest number of small donations.

The Congress believes that once it begins a door-to-door donation campaign, the amount will increase significantly. Maken said more than 20 individuals have already donated more than Rs 1 lakh.

Maken pointed out that the party has tied up with Bank of Baroda to collect donations, and only Indians within the country can donate. Indians above the age of 18 can donate a minimum of Rs 138 or in multiples, such as Rs 1,380, Rs 13,800 and so on, to the campaign.

On Monday, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge launched 'Donate for Desh' in Delhi to raise funds ahead of the general elections due next year. He also asked people to join the fight against unemployment and rising costs. 

As part of the donation, Kharge donated a sum of ₹1,38,000 from his salary to launch the campaign in the presence of party leaders and general secretaries KC Venugopal and Jairam Ramesh, besides Maken. Subsequently, Ramesh too donated Rs 1.38 lakh.

Elaborating on the benefits of the donation campaign, Maken said in addition to bringing in funds for the party, it would also help the party connect with supporters. He acknowledged that it wasn’t easy because the domain associated with Congress donations has been attacked more than 20,000 times, and most of the attackers were suspected to be from foreign countries.

According to Maken, there was no dispute over the domain name, but the BJP turned it into a controversy. The Congress had allegedly not booked the domain names before announcing the campaign, which resulted in DonateforDesh.org being booked by BJP, and right-wing news website OpIndia obtaining two related domains in the name of Donate for Desh campaign. The Congress has used https://donateinc.net/ for donations.

Maken indicated that the party will soon make available merchandise bearing images of Rahul Gandhi and party president Mallikarjun Kharge, while QR codes will be displayed at Congress rallies to enable donations.