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Source
Navbharat
Date
City
New Delhi

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) remained the biggest recipient of corporate donations in FY2019-20 , when there was a Lok Sabha election, that also saw the highest corporate funding to national parties, a total sum of 921.95 crore. In 2014-15, the previous Lok Sabha poll year,the corresponding number was 573.18 crore.

Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) in its report published on Monday, added that corporate funds accounted for 91% of the total contribution of political parties in 2019-20. The study covered BJP, Congress, CPIM, NCP and the TMC.

“The BJP received the maximum donations of 720.407 crore from 2025 corporate donors followed by INC (the Congress) which received a total contribution of 133.04 crore from 154 corporate donors, and NCP with 57.086 crore from 36 corporate donors,” said the ADR report.

Two other national parties, BSP and CPI were not part of the ADR review after BSP announced it didn’t receive any contributions above 20,000 in FY19-20 and CPI didn’t declare any income from corporates. According to India’s election laws, details of all donations above 20,000 must be declared in the annual report to the Election Commission.

Among the donors, electoral trusts emerged as the biggest spenders followed by followed by companies in the manufacturing sector. While electoral trusts contributed to 43% of all corporate donations in 2019-20, manufacturing industries (15.87%), and mining/ construction/export and import firms gave 13% of the donations.

According to the report, “Prudent Electoral Trust was the top donor to two of the National parties namely BJP and INC in FY 2019-20”. It contributed 216.75 crore to the BJP and 31 crore to the Congress. NCP’s top donor was B.G. Shirke Construction Technology Pvt. Ltd, which gave it 25 crore. Among other large donors, ITC contributed 55 crore to the BJP and 13.6 crore to the Congress.