BJP recieves highest donations in 2022-23, says electoral reform advocacy group

BJP recieves highest donations in 2022-23, says electoral reform advocacy group

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has received the highest amount of donations for the fiscal year 2022-23. This has been revealed in a report by the electoral reform advocacy group Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) where it has been stated that the saffron party received Rs 719.858 crore. 

The ADR report stated that investments to BJP increased from Rs 614.626 crore during FY 2021-22 to Rs 719.858 crore during FY 2022-23, which is a 17.12 per cent increase. 

Compared to the BJP, both Congress and CPI-M have registered decreases in their donation. While the donations of Congress decreased from Rs 95.459 crore during FY 2021-22 to Rs 79.924 crore, the CPI-M witnessed the highest decrease of 39.56 per cent, from Rs 10.055 crore in FY 2021-22 to Rs 6.077 crore in FY 2022-23. 

The ADR report further stated that National Parties declared receiving a total of Rs 623.16 cr by cheque/DD from 7,914 donations and formed 73.275 per cent of the total donations received. It is to be noted that 4211 donations of a total of Rs 120.721 cr or 14.195 per cent of all donations contained incomplete cheque/DD details while 146 donations, amounting to Rs 1.836 crore contained undeclared information of the mode of contribution and formed 0.216 per cent of the total donations declared by the parties.

The report further stated that 3318 donations from corporate/business sectors amounting to Rs 680.495 crore were made to the National parties while 8567 individual donors donated Rs 166.621 crore to the parties during FY 2022-23. With the maximum number of donations during FY 2022-23, BJP has declared 3067 donations from corporate/business sectors amounting to Rs 610.491 crore while 4612 individual donors donated Rs 106.724 crore to the party.

The ADR report states that donations declared by the National parties contained details of donations received from 33 States/Union Territories/common capitals. A total of Rs 276.202 crore was donated to the National parties from Delhi, followed by Rs 160.509 crore from Gujarat and Rs 96.273 crore from Maharashtra. However, a total of Rs 22.348 crore, (2.63 per cent of total donations received by the National parties, FY 2022-23), could not be attributed to any State/ Union Territory due to Undeclared address provided by the parties.

Of the 6 National parties, 4 parties namely BJP, INC, NPEP and CPI(M) had not declared PAN details of 1128 donations through which the parties collected a total of Rs 20.58 crore, as per the ADR report. 

The report further states that BJP collected Rs 20.078 crore from 1102 donations but failed to provide PAN details of donors. CPI(M) collected Rs 17.21 lakhs from 14 donations, NPEP collected Rs 30.50 lakhs from 9 donations and INC collected Rs 2.50 lakhs from 3 donations without PAN. Five National parties (BJP, INC, AAP, NPEP and CPI(M) have declared 93 donations of Rs 2.457 crore having 
missing/incorrect PAN details for FY 2022-23.

Coming to the top donors to the national parties, of the total donations of Rs 850.438 crore, the top 2 donors of every National party combined donated a sum of Rs 357.923 crore which forms 42.09 per cent of the parties’ overall donations above Rs 20,000 during FY 2022-23. The reports stated that Prudent Electoral Trust donated a total of Rs 256.25 crore to BJP. Congress received Rs 45.00 crore donations from M/s. MKJ Enterprises Ltd and donation worth Rs 5.50 crore from Nuvoco Vistas Corporation Limited. AAP received Rs 9.26 crore or 24.96 per cent of its total donations from Bharatha Swamukti Sams. 

The report has also revealed that the BJP collected maximum donations in January 2023, a total of Rs 16.424 crore from 141 donations and party has declared Rs 13.239 crore from 236 donations in March 2023. It was mentioned here that BJP has not declared the dates of payments for 5183 donations (Rs 618.63 crore) while Congress has not declared the dates of payments of all 894 donations of Rs 79.924 crore. 

AAP (2,979 donations of Rs 37.10 crore), NPEP (35 donations of Rs 7.479 crore) and CPI(M) (314 donations of Rs 6.077 crore) have not declared the dates of payments of all the donations.