More than Rs 250 crore received by parties from electoral trusts, 82 per cent to BJP alone: ADR
Seven Electoral Trusts have received a total of Rs 258.4915 crore as donations from corporates and other individuals during 2020-2021, out of which they have distributed Rs 258.4301 crore to various political parties. This information has come out from the analysis of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
Out of Rs 258.4301 crore donated to all political parties from electoral trusts, BJP alone has received Rs 212.05 crore i.e. 82.05 per cent. Prudent Electoral Trust, one of the largest electoral trust, donated Rs 209 crore to the BJP. During 2019-2020, Prudent Trust donated Rs 217.75 crore to BJP.
Jaibharat Electoral Trust has donated two crore rupees out of its total income to BJP in 2020-2021. Please note that electoral trusts are non-profit organizations. They make available corporate and individual donations to political parties.
Prudent Electoral Trust has donated to seven political parties BJP, JDU, Congress, NCP, RJD, Aam Aadmi Party and LJP. Among the corporates, Future Gaming & Hotel Services has contributed the highest amount of Rs 100 crore among all the donors to Electoral Trusts. After this, Haldia Energy India Limited has donated Rs 25 crore and Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited has donated Rs 22 crore to various trusts.
The report said, 159 people have donated to electoral trusts in 2020-2021. Two people have donated Rs 3.50 crore to Prudent Electoral Trust. 153 people have donated Rs 3.202 crore to the Small Donations Electoral Trust while three people have donated Rs 5 lakh to the Einzigerting Electoral Trust.
The top 10 donors have donated Rs 223 crore to electoral trusts, which is 86.27 per cent of the total donations received by the trusts during 2020-2021.
The Small Donations Electoral Trust has donated Rs 3.31 crore to the Congress. JDU got Rs 27 crore or 10.45 per cent of the total donations to political parties from all the seven electoral trusts.
Apart from this, 10 other political parties are Congress, NCP, AIADMK, DMK, RJD, Aam Aadmi Party, LJP, CPM, CPI and Loktantrik Janata Dal, which have collectively received a donation of Rs 19.23 crore.
The ADR said, “There are no details of the donors of these six electoral trusts. It is feared that funds were donated through these trusts to avoid tax or to convert black money into white. However, the details of donors to these electoral trusts constituted before the CBDT rules are framed should be disclosed.
“At present, the names of electoral trusts do not indicate the name of the company or group of companies constituting those trusts,” the report said. It would be appropriate to include the name of the parent company in the Electoral Trust in order to have transparency with regard to the details of the corporate donating to political parties. Heavy fine should be imposed on the electoral trusts which have not followed the guidelines of the Election Commission.
The ADR also said that all corporations should make the details of their political contributions in the public domain on their website to increase transparency in political financing.
