New Delhi: Electoral bonds are sold four times a year in January, April, July, and October, allowing political parties to accept money from donors whose identity is kept anonymous. In the financial year 2019-20, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got over 75% of the total electoral bonds, while the Congress party could manage to get just 9% of the total amount of Rs 3,435 collected, according to an Election Commission of India (ECI) data.
The BJP could get the bulk of the money donated– Rs 2,555 crore– through electoral bonds, and this was reported to be more than what it received the previous year. According to its audit report filed with the ECI, the BJP’s cash flow remains the highest among political parties at Rs 3,501 crore, up from Rs 1,904 in 2018-2019.
BJP’s annual audit report submitted to the ECI stated that it received Rs 210 crore contribution in form of electoral bonds in 2017-18.
Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), submitted its report on Monday, on donations received by the National Political Parties. The National Parties include Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian National Congress (INC), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and National People’s Party (NPEP).
Major highlights of the ADR report are:
-In its contribution report, FY 2019-20, BJP declared a donation of Rs 4.80 lakhs from Amravati Municipal Corporation. No details of address, bank name, PAN etc. have been provided by the party against this donation.
-BJP declared receiving land from 3 donors of a total value of Rs 1.516 cr. The three donations are from Jhanjhapur, Bihar each worth Rs 36.80 lakhs, Rs 50 lakhs and Rs 64.88 lakhs.
-The donations declared by BJP are more than 3 times the aggregate declared by the INC, NCP, CPI, CPM and AITC for the same period (Rs 785.77 cr against Rs 228.035 cr declared by the remaining parties).
-As done for the last 14 years, BSP has remarkably declared again that the party did not receive any donations above Rs 20,000.
-Five national parties, BJP, INC, NCP, CPI and CPM did not declare PAN details of 1697 donations through which the parties collected a total of Rs 47.121 cr (4.65% of the total donations declared by National Parties). This is more than the amount of donations (Rs 29.44 cr) declared by these National Parties during FY 2018-19.
-BJP declared Rs 44.238 cr from 1582 donations where it failed to provide PAN details of donors. INC collected Rs 82.60 lakhs from 29 donations without PAN. 42 donations declared by CPI (Rs 89.30 lakhs), 42 donations from CPM (Rs 86.40 lakhs) and 2 donations from NCP (Rs 30 lakhs) do not have PAN details.
-Three national parties (BJP, INC, and CPM) have declared Rs 13.757 cr from 94 donations having missing/incorrect PAN details. This is six times more than the amount of such donations declared by National Parties in FY 2018-19.
-BJP declared 570 donations of Rs 149.875 cr, AITC collected 52 donations worth Rs 7.1035 cr, INC collected 25 donations of Rs 2.6875 cr and NCP collected 2 donations of Rs 3.005 cr having incomplete cheque/DD details where cheque number, bank details on which it was drawn and the date on which the cheque was received/ encashed is not provided.
-CPM and CPI have also not declared the details of cheque and DD (cheque number, bank on which it was drawn and the date) for a total of 39 donations amounting to Rs 1.0786 cr and 29 donations amounting to Rs 52.17 lakhs, respectively.
-Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) made eight donations to CPM in the FY 2019-20 worth a total of Rs 10 crore.
The ADR analysis has stated that the Prudent Electoral Trust declared 29 donations worth Rs 217.75 cr to BJP in its annual report for FY 2019-20. White the contribution report of BJP for FY 2019-20 declared 28 donations, it doesn’t include one donation of Rs 1 cr from Prudent Electoral Trust, as was declared by the trust in its report, the ADR added.
Notably, the Electoral bonds scheme was first introduced in 2018 and has since faced criticism over the lack of transparency.
