In a finding that will add to suspicions that unrecognised political parties may have become a convenient way to launder money, it has been revealed that only a small fraction of such outfits have filed details of donations received by them to the Election Commission.
For the period 2013-14, out of 1,627 unrecognised parties, only 89, or five per cent, filed their donation reports with the Election Commission. In the subsequent year, 1,737 parties were listed by the electoral body as unrecognised, and of them, only 106, or six per cent, submitted statements of contributions received by them.
For 2015-16, 1,906 parties were listed as unrecognised, and of them, only 99, or just five per cent, submitted an account of the donations received by them.
An analysis by the Association for Democratic Reforms of the the details of donations declared by these parties found that in 2013-14, the declared income of unrecognised outfits was Rs 14.03 crore. In 2014-15, the figure stood at Rs 6.86 crore, whereas for 2015-16, the declared donations totalled Rs 4.37 crore.
Political parties are completely exempted from paying income tax as long as they file their income tax returns and submit details of donations that are above Rs 20,000 to the Election Commission.
A total of 33 unrecognised parties submitted their donation reports for all the three years. These include 10 from Gujarat; six from West Bengal; four each from Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Rajasthan; two from Chhattisgarh and one each from Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Five parties declared receiving donations in lakhs of rupees in one year while declaring nil donation during the other two years. As many as 14 out of these 33 parties declared nil donations for all three financial years.
These statistics further give rise to concern over unrecognised political parties being used for money laundering. In 1999, the ECI had issued notices to more than 200 parties, which were registered but failed to contest in any elections. As many as 150 of them were de-registered since either the notices sent to them were returned undelivered or they failed to respond.