Donations received by seven national parties in India saw a slump of over 80 per cent in fiscal 2015-16 in comparison to previous financial year, according to an analysis of donation details by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR).
The report said that the national parties have declared an amount of Rs 102.2 crore from 1,744 donations of or above Rs 20,000 in 2015-16 which is a substantial decrease from last years’ Rs 528.67 crore.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leads the fray with donation of Rs 76 crore from 613 donors, Congress comes a distant second with Rs 20 crore — from 918 donations.
The seven national parties are the BJP, Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Communist Party of India (CPI), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
The political parties, however, need not pay any Income Tax. According to rules, donations below Rs 20,000 are not required to be reported to the Election Commission, but they have to be mentioned in the Income Tax Returns filed by the parties.
The donations declared by the BJP is more than thrice the aggregate declared by the INC, NCP, CPI, CPM and AITC for the same year. The BSP declared that the party did not receive any donations above Rs 20,000 during FY 2015-16, as it has been declaring for the past 10 years.
According the report, the NCP showed the maximum decrease of 98 per cent in donations, declaring Rs 71 lakh under the head in this financial year, compared to Rs 38.82 crore in 2014-15.
It is to be noted that the BJP's donations had increased by 156 per cent between FY 2013-14 and 2014-15 while that of INC had increased by137 per cent during the same period.
Among all the states, donors from Karnataka made the highest donations of Rs 80 lakh in cash followed by donors from Meghalaya who donated a total of Rs 21.54 lakh in cash. Both the top donations were made to the Congress.
