Was the ruling party uncomfortable with the fact that nearly 50 per cent of electoral bonds had gone to non-BJP parties? Did it consider the non-disclosure of donors responsible for this relatively fair distribution? Did ADR and the Opposition parties become tools in its hands in achieving this objective?

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received Rs 6,088 crore in political funding in 2024-25, a 53 per cent jump over the Rs 3,967 crore it received in 2023-24, constituting almost 85 per cent of the total funding. Congress received a paltry Rs 522 crore, a steep decline of 54 per cent from Rs 1,129 crore in 2023-24, accounting for less than 7 per cent of the total. Other opposition parties fared worse in 2024-25, the first full year after electoral bonds were outlawed by the Supreme Court in February 2024.

The total political funding through electoral bonds amounted to Rs 16,308 crore (according to the website of the Association for Democratic Reforms, the organisation that was at the forefront of the movement against the scheme). Of this, the BJP had received Rs 8,252 crore, which was only 51 per cent, with the Opposition receiving nearly half. In 2024-25, however, this has completely flipped.

Two modes of political funding operated in India before electoral bonds were introduced in March 2018. First, companies or individuals could make political donations directly or through electoral trusts (ETs), by publicly disclosing the parties they were funding, with the receiving political parties filing details of donors with the Election Commission of India (ECI). Second, there was an opaque cash funding mechanism that did not require any disclosure of donors for amounts less than Rs 20,000.

The trouble was that electoral trusts were sparingly used, and political parties received almost all funds through the opaque cash system. There was nominal transparency in ETs, but the reality reeked of corruption, collusion and black money in cash funding. Electoral bonds introduced a third mode, with a critical protection regarding which political parties donors funded. The scheme ensured a fair distribution of political funding, with all major non-BJP parties receiving significant funding: Congress Rs 1,952 crore (12 per cent), TMC Rs 1,705 crore (10.5 per cent), BRS Rs 1,408 crore (8.6 per cent), BJD Rs 1,020 crore (6.3 per cent) and DMK Rs 677 crore (4.1 per cent), with other parties getting about 9 per cent. The funding distribution changed drastically in 2024-25. The BJP got 85 per cent of the funding, Congress fell to just 7 per cent and the TMC to 2.5 per cent.

Why is all political funding, post-electoral bonds, gravitating towards the BJP? It is not rocket science. Indian businesses and companies, whether small or big, receive benefits from the ruling party in the form of contracts and subsidies. They are naturally afraid of administrative and investigative action. Political donations to opposition parties can also invite retribution. In 2024-25, whichever electoral trust it was — the Prudent Electoral Trust, whose major contributors include Megha Engineering, the second-largest contributor to electoral bonds; the Progressive Electoral Trust, consisting mainly of the Tata group; or the New Democratic Electoral Trust, managed by the Mahindra Group — it ended up pushing almost all funding to the BJP (which secured only 36.6 per cent of the vote share in the 2024 general elections), leaving crumbs for non-BJP parties.

It is also interesting to look back at the campaign launched against electoral bonds. It was led by ADR and some Opposition parties, primarily Congress and the AAP. The Supreme Court Bench led by the then Chief Justice of India, D Y Chandrachud, not only declared the scheme unconstitutional but also forced the State Bank of India to disclose protected details of who donated how much to which political parties. The BJP did not actively oppose the scrapping of electoral bonds, nor did it do anything to protect the confidentiality of donor details. ADR celebrated the junking of the scheme and the “transparency” this brought to political funding. The Opposition felt jubilant. But it could not expose any evidence of “corruption” in the electoral bond contributions to the BJP. Its political funding, instead, was eviscerated. The BJP, meanwhile, used all the information to nudge funding overwhelmingly in its favour.

Was the ruling party uncomfortable with the fact that nearly 50 per cent of electoral bonds had gone to other parties? Did it consider the non-disclosure of donors responsible for this relatively fair distribution? Did ADR and the Opposition parties become tools in its hands in achieving this objective?