Corporate and business groups donated Rs 921.95 crore to national parties in the financial year 2019-20, of which the Bharatiya Janata Party got the maximum amount of Rs 720,407 crore. This information has been given in a report. An analysis of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-governmental organization (NGO) working to bring transparency in electoral politics, revealed that between the financial years 2017-18 and 2018-19, the contribution made by corporate groups to national parties 109 percent increase.

This analysis was done on the basis of details given by the political parties to the Election Commission of India about those who contributed more than Rs 20,000 in a financial year. The five political parties analyzed for donations include the BJP, the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).

BJP and Congress got maximum donations
According to the report, out of these, during the financial year 2019-20 (Financial Year 219-20), the BJP received the maximum donation of Rs 720,407 crore from 2,025 corporate donors. After this, Congress got Rs 133.04 crore from 154 donors and NCP got Rs 57.086 crore from 36 corporate donors. The CPI(M) did not report any income from corporate donations for 2019-20.

It has been told in the report that ‘Prudent Electoral Trust’ gave maximum donations to BJP and Congress in 2019-20. He donated a total of Rs 247.75 crore to both the parties 38 times in a year. The ADR in its report said, “BJP has announced to get Rs 216.75 crore from Prudent Electoral Trust and Rs 31 crore by Congress. ‘B G Shirke Construction Technology Pvt Ltd’ contributed the most to NCP in 2019-20.

1,024 percent increase in donations
The ADR report said that between the period 2012-13 to 2019-20, national parties received the highest corporate donation of Rs 921.95 crore in 2019-20 (when elections were held for the 17th Lok Sabha) followed by 881.26 crore in 2018-19. Rs.573.18 crore and in 2014-15 (when elections were held for the 16th Lok Sabha) Rs.573.18 crore was received. The report states that between 2012-13 and 2019-20, there has been an increase of 1,024 per cent in donations from corporate and business houses to national parties.

The contribution of corporate/business houses was divided by the ADR into 15 sectors/categories. These include trusts and groups of companies, manufacturing, power and oil, mining, construction, export/import, and real estate and other sectors.