Political parties see 84% fall in donations, BJP remains a corporate favourite: Report

It seems all is not well with political parties in India, at least not financially. With state assembly elections just around the corner in five states — Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab, and Manipur — the political parties in India may be keeping a close eye on spending as there has been a significant reduction in earnings.A report published earlier this week by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch, said that donations to political parties reduced by nearly 84 percent. In 2015-2016, these parties just received 16 percent of the amount they received in 2014-2015, the report said.

Political parties rely heavily on donations for their earnings, and elections are usually the time when they spend heavily on promotional campaigns and to woo voters. And with elections in the six states just around the corner, the current election is expected to be less money-oriented than before.The report focuses on earnings of six political parties — BJP, Congress, NCP, Trinamool Congress, CPM and CPI. According to the report, 1,744 people or organisations donated Rs 102.02 crores to these parties. Of them, 359 donors were corporate houses and 1,322 donors were individuals.However, more than 75 percent of the donations in 2015-2016 came from corporate houses amounting to Rs 77.28 crores, whereas contribution of individual donors stood at Rs 23.41 crores.According to rules set by the Election Commission of India, all political parties are expected to report donations valued at Rs 20,000 or higher along with the PAN. However, since donations below the amount are not reported, the actual figures could be less as well.The report also shows fall in donations of both BJP and Congress, the two largest political parties of India. While BJP's donation fell to Rs 76.85 crores in 2015-2016 from Rs 437.35 crore in 2014-2015, Congress received just Rs 20.42 crores in 2015-2016 as compared to 141.46 crores that it received in 2014-2015. However, BJP maintained its lead receiving the highest amount in donations in both 2014-2015 as well as in 2015-2016.Also, a large part of donations received by the BJP came from corporate houses (283 out of 359 corporate donations) amounting to Rs 67.99 crores, whereas Congress received just Rs 8.83 crores via 57 donations from corporate houses.