Political parties show dip in donations above Rs 20,000

Seven national parties in India received a total of Rs 102.2 crore as donations in fiscal 2015-16, compared to Rs 528.67 crore in the previous year, showing a dip of about 84 per cent, the information submitted to the Election Commission by the parties showed.

Amid talks of transparency in donations to political parties, a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said 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.

Of this, Rs 1.45 crore was in cash, which is merely 1.42 per cent of the total amount.

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 political parties, however, need not pay any Income Tax.

The seven national parties are the Bharatiya Janata Party (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).

Of these, the BSP said they have not received any donations which were more than Rs 20,000.

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.

The ruling BJP declared Rs 76.85 crore as donation in the financial year 2015-16, a dip of 82 per cent from financial year 2014-15, when they received Rs 437.35 crore.

Between 2013-14 and 2014-15, the BJP had shown an increase of 137 per cent in its donations.

The Congress got Rs 20.42 crore, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Rs 1.81 crore, Communist Party of India (CPI) Rs 1.58 crore and the Trinamool Congress got Rs 65 lakh.

--IANS

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