Report confirms suspicions aired by Association for Democratic Reforms, which last year had reported a 223% hike in income of registered unrecognised political parties in the 2022-23 financial year
Six Gujarat-based registered unrecognised political parties earned around Rs 1,700.78 crore from donations in the 2023-24 fiscal year, at least Rs 200 crore more than the cumulative income of five national parties excluding the BJP, even though these six parties hardly put up electoral candidates.
A BBC Hindi investigative report has confirmed suspicions aired by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which last year had reported a 223 per cent hike in the income of such registered unrecognised political parties in the previous financial year, 2022-23.
The ADR report published on July 18, 2025 stated that five of these unrecognised political parties were Gujarat-based and had a cumulative income of Rs 2,316 crore in the years between 2019 and 2024.
Also, 73 per cent of the nearly 2,800 registered unrecognised political parties in the country had not published their financial records.
The total income of five national parties excluding the BJP – the Congress, the CPM, AAP, the BSP and the National People’s Party – was Rs 1,480.43 crore in 2023-24.
The BBC traced four of these parties to Ahmedabad, while two others are headquartered in other parts of Gujarat.
The BBC Hindi report by Shubhangi Mishra said it was not accusing these six parties of any financial wrongdoing, but flagged the strangeness of the phenomenon.
The party with the highest donation received in 2023-24 was one called the Aam Janmat Party which received Rs 620 crore, a jump from the Rs 216 crore it had received in the previous financial year.
The party fielded only one candidate in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
The party was established in 2020 with Anamika Paswan as its president in Patna. Paswan is currently a vice-president of the BJP’s Bihar unit, and reportedly informed the BBC she had resigned after the Aam Janmat Party moved to Ahmedabad.
The Satyawadi Rakshak Party, based in Gujarat’s Anand, had received Rs 330.55 crore in donations and ranks second in the list.
According to the audit report submitted by the party to the Election Commission it spent Rs. 8.48 crore on the Lok Sabha election campaign and Rs 316 crore on social welfare projects.
The Satyawadi Rakshak Party fielded one candidate in the Lok Sabha election.
The four other parties are Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party (Rs 219.69 crore), New India United Party (Rs 200.69 crore), Bharatiya National Janta Dal (Rs 191.61 crore) and Gareeb Kalyan Party (Rs 138 crore).
The BBC found most of the offices of these parties shut and the office-bearers either missing or unwilling to speak.
The BBC investigation revealed that these parties together had fielded only 15 candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. In contrast, the five national parties excluding the BJP had fielded 893 candidates.
The BBC’s investigation is corroborated by the ADR report which had stated that five Gujarat-based parties, most of them formed after 2018, had fielded 17 candidates in two Lok Sabha polls and one Assembly election held between 2019 and 2024.
According to the ADR report, Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of registered unrecognised political parties, 744, followed by Delhi with 240 and Tamil Nadu with 230.
The most well-known such party in India is the National Citizen’s Party of India, which boasts of 20 MPs in Lok Sabha after a split in the Trinamool Congress after the Bengal Assembly polls held this summer.
However, the BBC investigation did not cover the NCPI.
The Trinamool which was voted out of power has split in both its parliamentary and legislative parties. Out of the 29 Lok Sabha seats that the party had won in 2024, a total of 20 of the MPs announced their merger with the little-known outfit NCPI and aligned themselves with the BJP.
To the Trinamool’s petition seeking disqualification of the “defectors” the NCPI MPs – led by veterans and former Mamata Banerjee-loyalists Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar – on Tuesday sought more time from Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to reply.
The Trinamool’s all-India general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking immediate disqualification proceedings against the rebels.
The hearing in the case is scheduled for later this month.
Trinamool Lok Sabha MP and advocate Kalyan Bandyopadhyay asked where these parties were spending their funds.
“They do not have any MPs or MLAs, so where are they spending their money? A bigger question is whether these parties are working under the veil for others,” Bandyopadhyay told The Telegraph Online.
The RJD’s Rajya Sabha MP and national spokesperson Manoj Kumar Jha said the Supreme Court should immediately intervene.
“This [probe] cannot be left to the income-tax department, the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI. The Supreme Court should take suo motu cognisance and give directions,” Jha told The Telegraph Online.
“A party that does not contest polls gets Rs 620 crore in donations. Their earning is more than the net income of the registered political parties. This seems to be a front to legitimise hawala transactions,” Jha said.
He said his party would discuss whether to move court on the issue.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had flagged the issue last December. In a press release on December 13, 2025, the CBDT said huge amount of bogus claims of income-tax refunds were made by donations made to registered unrecognised political parties (RUPPS) or charitable institutions.
“Evidence gathered from enforcement actions indicated that RUPPs many of which were non-filers, non-operational at their registered addresses and are not engaged in any political activity were being used as conduits for routing funds, hawala transactions, cross border remittances and issuing bogus receipts for donations,” the CBDT release read.