95% donations made to regional parties through electoral bonds unaccounted

New Delhi, Nov 12: Over 55 per cent of the donations made to regional parties are from unknown sources. Association for Democratic Reforms also said in its report that 95 per cent of the donations were from unknown sources and they came through electoral bonds.

Some of the top Regional Parties to declare the highest unknown income include TRS (Rs 89.158 cr), TDP (Rs 81.694 cr), YSR-C (Rs 74.75 cr), BJD (Rs 50.586 cr) and DMK (Rs 45.50 cr).

Regional Parties such as the IUML, DMK, PMK, MNS, JVM-P, SDF and NPF provided details of donations below Rs 20,000 also. Income of Political Parties from Known, Other Known and Unknown Sources
For this report, known sources have been defined as donations above and below Rs 20,000, whose donor details are available through contribution reports as submitted by regional parties to the ECI.

The unknown sources are income declared in the Annual Audit reports but without giving source of income for donations below Rs. 20,000. Such unknown sources include 'Donations via Electoral Bonds', 'sale of coupons', 'relief fund', 'miscellaneous income', 'voluntary contributions', 'contribution from meetings/morchas' etc. The details of donors of such voluntary contributions are not available in the public domain, the report also said.

Other known sources of income include sale of moveable and immoveable assets, old newspapers, membership fees, delegate fee, bank interest, sale of publications and levy whose details would be available in the books of accounts maintained by political parties.

For this analysis, 53 Regional (recognised) parties were initially considered, but out of them only 28 have filed both their Annual Audit and Contribution reports (refer Annexure 1), remaining 16 had not submitted either of the reports (refer Annexure 2). None of the two reports of 9 Regional parties are available on the ECI website at the time of preparation of this report.

The Annual Audit and Contribution reports of Regional parties such as AAP, LJP and IUML are available on the website, but parties' donation declarations show discrepancies between data in the both reports for FY 2019- 20. Therefore, these parties have not been analysed in this report.

Highlights:

• Total income of 25 Regional political parties in FY 2019-20: Rs 803.24 crore
• Total income of political parties from known donors (details of donors as available from Contribution report submitted by parties to Election Commission): Rs 184.623 cr, which is 22.98% of the total income of the parties.
• Total income of political parties from other known sources (e.g. Membership fees, bank interest, sale of
  publications, party levy etc.): Rs 172.843 cr, or 21.52% of total income.
• Total income of political parties from unknown sources (income specified in the audit reports whose sources are unknown): Rs 445.774 cr, which is 55.50% of the total income of the parties.
• Some of the top Regional Parties to declare highest unknown income include TRS (Rs 89.158 cr), TDP (Rs 81.694 cr), YSR-C (Rs 74.75 cr), BJD (Rs 50.586 cr) and DMK (Rs 45.50 cr).
• Regional Parties such as the IUML, DMK, PMK, MNS, JVM-P, SDF and NPF provided details of donations below Rs 20,000 also.