New Delhi: The donations declared by the BJP are more than nine times the aggregate declared by INC, NCP, CPI, CPM and AITC for the financial year 2016-17 and stands at a staggering Rs 532.27 crore, revealed the Association of Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch.
The Congress is far behind at Rs 41.40 crore.
A report prepared by the ADR focused on the donations received by the national political parties, above Rs 20,000, during the financial year 2016-17.
One of the rules incorporated to usher in transparency in political funding was that all political parties were required to submit details of donors who have made donations above Rs 20,000 in a financial year to the Election Commission of India, every year.
BSP declared that the party did not receive any donations above Rs 20,000 during FY 2016-17, as it has been declaring for the past 11 years.
The report has also noted that the total income of the seven national parties from unknown sources for 2016-17 was Rs 710.80 cr, which makes for about 45.59% of the total income of the parties from all over India.
The rise in BJP's fortunes was unmissable.
“Donations to BJP increased from Rs 76.85 cr during FY 2015-16 to Rs 532.27 cr during FY 2016-17 (593% increase) while NCP has declared an increase of 793%, from Rs 71 lakhs in FY 2015-16 to Rs 6.34 cr in FY 2016-17,” said the report.
However, the report notes “ambiguity in details of donations” as declared by the parties as “4 parties, BJP, INC, CPI and CPM had not declared PAN details of 166 donations through which the parties collected a total of Rs 2.86 cr.”
Among the unknown sources of funding, maximum funds were collected under "Voluntary Contributions" by BJP during FY 2016-17. A total of Rs 464.84 cr was collected under this head which formed 99.98% of the total income from unknown sources of BJP.
Even Congress collected Rs 1.69 cr from 88 donations but failed to provide PAN details of donors.
Out of the total, 708 donations to the national parties were made by corporate/business sectors amounting to Rs 563.24 cr, 531 donations from corporate/business sectors were made to BJP (Rs 515.43 cr) while 663 individual donors donated Rs 16.82 cr to the party during 16-17.
The report has critiqued the ruling party for collecting “54 cr from 26 donations without declaring Address and Mode of payments in its donations statement for 16’-17'".
ADR and NEW have suggested that “full details of all donors should be made available for public scrutiny under the RTI”.
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