More than half of all donations received by political parties between 2016-17 and 2021-22 were through Electoral Bonds and the BJP received more funds than all other national parties put together, a report by think tank Association for Democratic Reforms said.
According to the ADR, donations worth around Rs 16,437 crore were received by the seven national parties and 24 regional parties in India between 2016-17 and 2021-22. Of this, Rs 9,188.35 crore — around 56 percent — were received through Electoral Bonds.
The Bharatiya Janata Pary (BJP) declared donations worth Rs 10,122.03 crore between 2016-17 and 2021-22, followed by the Congress (Rs 1,547.43 crore) and the Trinamool Congress (Rs 823.30 crore), the report said.
The total donations declared by the BJP is more than three times the total donations declared by all the other national parties, it said.
Donations worth Rs 4,614.53 crore, about 28 per cent of the total, were received from the corporate sector and Rs 2,634.74 crore (16.03 per cent) were received from other sources.
More than 80 per cent of the donations, around Rs 13,190.68 crore, were received by the national parties, and Rs 3,246.95 crore (19.75 per cent) by regional parties, the ADR said.
For the national parties, there was a 743 per cent increase in donations from electoral bonds between 2017-18 and 2021-22, while corporate donations increased by 48 per cent.
The highest donations were received in 2019-20, the year of general elections (Rs 4,863.50 crore), followed by Rs 4,041.48 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 3,826.56 crore in FY 2021-22.
The BJP, which got three times more donations than all other national parties put together, got over 52 per cent of it through Electoral Bonds. Around 32 per cent of the donations to the BJP came from corporate houses.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Communist Party of India (CPI) received 100 per cent donations from “other” sources, which means donations less than Rs 20,000 for which political parties do not need to declare the details of the donor.
Among the regional parties, more than 89.81 per cent of the BJD’s total donations came from Electoral Bonds worth Rs 622 crore, the DMK declared the second highest donations from bonds of Rs 431.50 crore, followed by the TRS which declared Rs 383.65 crore and YSR-C which declared Rs 330.44 crore.
The direct corporate donations declared by the seven national parties are more than five times the corporate donations declared by 31 regional parties during the six-year period.
In the six-year period, direct corporate donations declared by the regional parties increased by around 152 per cent.
