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In 2014-15, the year the Lok Sabha elections catapulted Narendra Modi to power with a massive mandate, the Sunil Bharti Mittal-led Bharti Group’s Satya Electoral Trust and the Aditya Birla Group’s General Electoral Trust were the top two corporate donors to both the BJP and Congress.
The Bharti Group, a big player in the telecom and retail sectors, was in fact Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) largest donor at Rs 107.25 crore. It gave Rs 18.75 crore to the Congress.
The Bharti group’s donation to BJP accounts for 25 per cent of the Rs 437.35 received by the party from corporates and individuals, out of the total Rs 622.38 crore declared by all national parties put together, says an analysis by Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) of submissions by the national parties to the Election Commission of India of donations above Rs 20,000.
While General Electoral Trust was BJP’s second largest corporate donor, doling out Rs 63.2 crore to the party, it emerged as the largest donor to the Congress, pouring Rs 54.1 crore into the party’s coffers. The Trust had not made any donations to national parties during 2013-14.
“With 1,234 donations from individuals and corporates, the donations declared by BJP are more than twice the aggregate declared by Congress (Rs 141.46 crore), Nationalist Congress Party (Rs 38.82 crore), CPI(M) (Rs 3.42 crore) and Communist Party of India (Rs 1.33 crore) for the same period,” said the analysis.
Among States, the highest amount from corporates and individuals flowed from Maharashtra (Rs 260.01 crore), followed by Rs 24.76 crore from Gujarat and Rs 15.34 crore from Delhi.
Overall, the total donations to all national parties rose by 151 per cent, compared with 2013-14, with the BJP seeing a 156 per cent rise (Rs 170.86 crore in 2013-14), ADR-NEW said.
The highest increase (177 per cent) in donations was declared by NCP from Rs 14.02 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 38.82 crore in FY 2014-15.
Overall, corporate/business sectors made 968 donations worth Rs 576.37 crore (92.61 per cent of total donations) to the national parties, while 699 individuals donated Rs 45.23 crore. BJP emerged as the favourite for corporates/business getting 794 donations amounting to Rs 409.94 crore, while Congress bagged 121 such donations amounting to Rs 127.96 crore.
However, ADR-NEW noted “incomplete disclosure of information” in some reports. “Rs 83.915 lakh was declared as received by BJP from 20 donors whose PAN details, address and mode of contribution (together) were unavailable,” said the analysis, while the Congress has no mentioned the cheque/DD numbers for 192 donations amounting to Rs 138.98 crore.
Demanding that full details of all donors should be made available for public scrutiny, ADR-NEW said some countries where this is done include Bhutan, Nepal, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, Bulgaria, the US and Japan.
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