Corporate donations: ADR report says BJP received highest amount; Congress second

Eastern Mirror Desk
Dimapur, Oct. 18 (EMN): The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has revealed that in the financial year 2018-19, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received the maximum donations of INR 698.082 crore out of five national political parties.

According to the recently released report by ADR, BJP received the donations from 1573 corporate donors. This was followed by Indian National Congress (INC), which received a total contribution of INR 122.5 crore from 122 corporate donors, and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) with INR 11.345 crore from 17 corporate donors.

Political parties are required to submit details of donors who have made donations above INR 20,000 in a financial year (between April 1 and March 31) to the Election Commission of India, every year. Parties provide details of the name, address, PAN, mode of payment and amount contributed by each donor who has made a donation above INR 20,000 in their submission, it informed.

Political parties which were considered in the ADR report were BJP, INC, NCP, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) and All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). During the FY 2018-19, a total of INR 876.10 crore was donated by all the corporate and business houses to the five national parties constituting 92% of the total contribution to political parties from known sources.

It stated that donations from corporates to national parties increased by 131% from the period between 2004-12 to 2018-19.

The report stated that BJP’s and INC’s voluntary contributions above INR 20,000 from corporate and business houses were 94% and 82% respectively.

Progressive Electoral Trust was the top donor to three of the national parties namely BJP, INC and AITC in the FY 2018-19. The Trust donated three times in a single year to the three parties each, amounting to a total of INR 455.15 crore.

BJP declared receiving INR 356.535 crore while INC and AITC were the recipients of INR 55.629 crore and INR 42.986 crore respectively in single donations each.

BG Shirke Construction Technology Pvt. Ltd. was the top donor to NCP in FY 2018- 19.

It may be mentioned that though a national party, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was not considered for analysis in the report as the party had declared that it received no voluntary contributions above INR 20,000 from any donor during 2018-19 as well as during the time period since 2004.

Communist Party of India did not declare any income from corporates for FY 2018-19 and hence had also not been taken up for analysis in the report.