Being the ruling party, the BJP continued to bag the lion’s share of donations in 2019-20. It received over Rs 785.77 crore in donations above Rs 20,000 from 5576 donations including electoral trusts, individuals and corporate. The opposition Congress was far behind with Rs 139.016 crore from 350 donations. The amount received by the BJP is five times more than what Congress got during the same period and more than three times the aggregate of Rs 228.035 crore declared by the INC, NCP, CPI, CPM and AITC.

Interestingly, 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, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-government organization that released the data, said.

“A casual search on the internet shows that the aforesaid donor is a Government of Maharashtra local body. It raises questions on the legality of the contribution made by a municipal corporation which is a governing body (whose Mayor and deputy Mayor are from BJP) to a political party,” the ADR said. The report, prepared by the ADR focuses on donations received by the national political parties, above Rs 20,000, during the financial year 2019-20, as submitted by the parties to the Election Commission of India (ECI).