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New Delhi: 

The BJP received ₹ 742 crore in donations, while the Congress got ₹ 148 crore, according to submissions made by the parties before the Election Commission for 2018-19 which was compiled by think tank the Association of Democratic Reforms.

Donations for the BJP increased from ₹ 437.04 crore during 2017-18 to ₹ 742.15 crore during 2018-19, a rise of 70 per cent, the ADR said.

The Congress' donations increased from ₹ 26 crore during 2017-18 to ₹ 148.58 crore during 2018-19, a rise of 457 per cent, it said, adding the party''s donations had decreased by 36 per cent between 2016-17 and 2017-18.

"A total of ₹ 742.15 crore was declared by the BJP from 4,483 donations while the INC (Indian National Congress) declared receiving ₹ 148.58 crore from 605 donations," the ADR said in a statement.

The report focussed on donations of ₹ 20,000 and above.

On the other hand, the donations declared by the BJP is more than three times the aggregate of what has been declared by the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] and the Trinamool Congress during the same period, it added.

The statement said, "1,575 donations from corporate/business sectors were made to BJP (Rs 698.092 crore) while 2,741 individual donors donated ₹ 41.70 crore to the party during FY 2018-19."

"The INC received a total of ₹ 122.5 crore via 122 donations from corporate/business sectors and ₹ 25.39 crore via 482 individual donors during FY 2018-19."

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) declared that it did not receive any donations above ₹ 20,000 during FY 2018-19, as it has been declaring for the past 13 years.

The Progressive Electoral Trust donated ₹ 455.15 crore to the BJP, Congress and Trinamool Congress together and is one of the top two donors to the three parties that received the maximum donations.

The Trust donated ₹ 356.535 crore to the BJP (48.04 per cent of total funds received by the party) and ₹ 55.629 crore to the Congress (37.44 per cent)

The BJP and INC received ₹ 67.25 crore (9.06 per cent) and ₹ 39 crore (26.25 per cent), respectively from the Prudent Electoral Trust.

The statement added that the BJP declared 452 donations of ₹ 514.48 crore, the Trinamool Congress collected 89 donations of ₹ 44.26 crore and the Congress received 51 donations of ₹ 4.51 crore having incomplete cheque/DD details where cheque number, bank details on which it was drawn and the date on which the cheque was received/ encashed is not provided.

2Comments"Thus, without the complete cheque/DD details, it would be a time consuming process to link the donors against their donations and hence trace the money trail," it added.