National political parties — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Trinamool Congress — received ₹469.89 crore as donations above ₹20,000.
Top donors
After assessing the submissions made by the parties before the Election Commission, the Association of Democratic Report (ADR) said in a report that the amount was raised from the contributions of 4,201 donors. The Prudent Electoral Trust, that donated ₹164.30 crore to the BJP and the Congress combined, is the top donor to the two parties. The Trust donated ₹154.30 crore to the BJP and ₹10 crore to the Congress.
The BJP said that it received ₹437.04 crore through 2,977 donations from individuals and corporates while the Congress said it received ₹26.658 crore through 777 donations in 2017-18. A total of 196 people made donations higher than ₹20,000 to the CPI (M) and 176 contributed to the CPI. The NCP got 42 donations.
“The least number of donations was declared by the Trinamool Congress (33 donations),” said the report. “The donations declared by the BJP is more than 12 times the aggregate declared by the Congress, the NCP, the CPI, the CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress,” the report added.
“The BJP received an average of ₹14.68 lakhs per donor; the NCP – ₹ 4.97 lakh per donor, the Congress ₹ 3.43 lakh per donor, the CPI(M) – ₹ 1.40 lakh per donor, the CPI – ₹0.65 lakh per donor and the Trinamool Congress – ₹ 0.61 lakh per donor. The BSP declared that the party did not receive any donations above ₹20,000 during 2017-18, as it has been declaring for the past 12 years,” said the ADR report.
Out of the total donations, ₹384.53 crore was given through cheque/DD. “It is to be noted that 582 donations, amounting to ₹ 20.87 crore, contained incomplete and undeclared information on the mode of contribution but formed 4.44 per cent of the total donations declared,” the report pointed out.
A total of 1,361 donations from corporate/business sectors amounting to ₹422.04 crore were made to the parties while 2,772 individuals donated ₹47.12 crore to the parties during 2017-18.
“With the maximum number of donations during 2017-18, the BJP has declared 1,207 donations from corporate/business sectors amounting to ₹400.23 crore while 1,759 individuals donated ₹36.71 crore to the party. Donations from corporates formed 91.58 per cent of the total declared by the BJP. Fifty-three donations from corporate/business sectors amounting to ₹19.298 crore were made to the Congress while 724 individuals donated ₹7.36 crore to the party,” the report said.
The BJP, Congress, the CPI and the CPI(M) had not declared PAN details of 219 donors through which the parties collected a total of ₹4.95 crore.