A political funding trust backed by Bharti Enterprises among other corporates, has once again emerged as the top donor to political parties with a contribution of Rs 247.75 crore.
As per an analysis by the Association for Democratic Reforms, in the financial year 2019-20, a total of Rs 921.95 crore was donated by corporate/business houses to the five national parties. This accounts for 91 per cent of the total donations to parties from known sources. From 2004-12, there has been an increase of 143 per cent in donations to parties.
Known sources are those which make a donation of above Rs 20,000 to a political party in a financial year. Such donors are required to submit their name, address and PAN number while making the donation, and parties in turn are required to disclose the same to the Election Commission of India. The top national parties analysed were the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian National Congress (INC), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), and All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). The CPI did not report any corporate donations in the year.
In 2016-17 and 2017-18, Bharti Enterprises backed Prudent Electoral Trust (earlier known as Satya Electoral Trust) was the top donor to the BJP and INC. It gave an amount of Rs 429.42 crore to the two parties. In the subsequent financial year it was replaced by the Progressive Electoral Trust backed by the Tatas.
The biggest funders in 2019-20 were the Prudent Electoral Trust, ITC Limited, Jankalyan Electoral Trust, BG Shirke Construction technology Private Limited and Panchshil Corporate Park Private Limited.
The BJP received Rs 216.75 crore from Prudent Electoral Trust while the Congress got Rs 31 crore from it.
The CPI(M) received donations from Muthoot Finance Limited (Rs 2.65 crore), Kalyan Jewellers (Rs 1.12 crore) and Navayuga Engineering Company (Rs 0.5 crore).
The AITC’s top donors were New Democratic Electoral Trust, Texmaco Infrastructure Holding Limited and Texmaco Rail and Engineering Limited.
For the NCP, the top donors were BG Shirke Construction technology Private Limited, Panchshil Corporate Park Private Limited and Modern Road Makers Private Limited.
The total size of corporate donations stood at Rs 720.407 crore for the BJP, Rs 133.04 crore for the INC and Rs 57.086 crore for the NCP.
Of donations with incomplete or undeclared modes of payments, the BJP stands at the top with 93.18 per cent such donations worth Rs 147.228 crore while the second place belongs to the AITC with donations worth Rs 4.25 crore being from unclear sources.
While electoral trusts account for the most donation to parties, they are followed by corporates from the manufacturing; mining, construction, imports/exports; real estate and finance sectors.
