BJP biggest beneficiary of electoral trusts in 2018-19

The Progressive Electoral Trust of the Tata Group contributed Rs 356.53 crore to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's kitty in 2018-19 – six times more than the amount it donated to the Opposition Congress.

The Tata Group was the biggest contributor to the BJP's coffer in the last financial year. It deposited a cheque of Rs 356,53,55,172 crore to the ruling party's account. The Congress, the principal Opposition party, on the other hand, received just Rs 55.62 crore from the Progressive Electoral Trust.

Both the BJP and the Congress submitted to the Election Commission the annual reports detailing the contributions of more than Rs 20,000 they received from an individual as well as corporate donors.

The BJP remained the biggest beneficiary of the electoral trusts, which pooled the contributions from India Inc for donations to the political parties.

The Progressive Electoral Trust has not yet submitted its annual contribution report to the EC. But only if its donations to the BJP and the Congress in the last financial year are taken into account, its total corpus surely surpassed that of the Prudent Electoral Trust, which was the richest among all the electoral trusts in the country in previous fiscal (2017-18). The Prudent, which is controlled by Bharti Enterprises, contributed a total of Rs 182.30 crore in 2018-19, according to the annual report it submitted to the EC. The Progressive Electoral Trust, however, donated Rs 412.15 crore only to the Congress and the BJP in the same financial year.

The Prudent, controlled by Bharti Enterprises, donated Rs 67.25 crore to the BJP in 2018-19. The Congress received only Rs 39 crore from the trust, which, apart from Bharti Enterprises, also pooled contributions from the GMR Group, DLF Limited, and several other companies. After the BJP and the Congress, two regional parties in Andhra Pradesh are the third and fourth largest recipients of the donations from the Prudent – the YSR Congress Party received Rs 26 crore, while its arch-rival Telugu Desam Party received Rs 25 crore.

The Prudent had contributed in 2017-18 financial year a whopping Rs 144 crore to the BJP and just Rs 10 crore to the Congress. But it apparently did a balancing act in 2018-19, ahead of the parliamentary elections in April-May this year. It still gave the BJP the largest chunk of the contributions it pooled in but narrowed down the difference between its donations to the ruling party and that to the principal opposition party from Rs 134 crore in 2017-18 to just Rs 28.25 crore in 2018-19.