"A total of Rs 742.15 crore was declared by the BJP from 4,483 donations while the Congress declared receiving Rs 148.58 crore from 605 donations," the ADR said in a statement.
The ADR compiled the statistics based on the data submitted by all the recognised national parties - the BJP, the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) - to the Election Commission (EC). Only the donations of Rs 20,000 or above were taken into consideration.
"The donations declared by the BJP is more than three times the aggregate declared by the Congress, NCP, CPI, CPI(M) and the Trinamool Congress for the same period. The BSP declared that the party did not receive any donations above Rs 20,000 during FY 2018-19, as it has been declaring for the past 13 years," the ADR noted.
Given that 2018-19 was an election year, the donation declared by the national parties saw a surge of 103% from the previous year. While the donations to the BJP grew by 70%, from Rs 437.04 crore in 2017-18 to Rs 742.15 crore in 2018-19, the Congress witnessed an increase of 457%, from Rs 26.658 crore to Rs 148.58 crore.
The ADR identified Tata Group-controlled Progressive Electoral Trust as one of the top donors as it donated Rs 356.535 crore to the BJP and Rs 55.629 crore to the Congress. On the other hand, the Prudent Electoral Trust gave away Rs 67.25 crore and Rs 39 crore to the BJP and the Congress respectively.
BJP crossed deadline of submission
The ADR also reported that the national parties were required to submit the details of all the donations over Rs 20,000 to the EC by September 30, 2019. However, the BJP could not keep up with the assigned date and was 31 days late in its submission.
The CPI(M) and the CPI too exceeded the deadline by 21 days and 3 days respectively.
