Donations to the Bharatiya Janata Party, ahead of the Lok Sabha Elections 2024, jumped by 87%, reaching ₹3,967.14 crore, showed the ruling party’s annual audit report for 2023-2024 that the Election Commission of India published recently. However, the share of income through electoral bonds decreased for the BJP in 2023-24 compared to the previous fiscal.
The BJP had received ₹1,294.14 crore contributions as electoral bonds, forming 54 per cent of the total ₹2,360 crore income that the BJP earned in 2022-23.
According to the report, the BJP received ₹3,967.14 crore in voluntary contributions in 2023-2024, compared to ₹2,120.06 crore in 2022-2023.
Takeaways from BJP's annual audit report for 2023-2024:
The audit report showed electoral bonds to the BJP stood at ₹1,685.62 crore, or 43% of its total contributions. In 2022-2023, the party had received ₹1,294.14 crore in the form of electoral bonds, which was 61% of the total contributions.
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The BJP also saw a jump in spending on campaigns and propaganda, surging to ₹1,754.06 crore in 2023-2024 from ₹1,092.15 crore in 2022-2023. According to the report, ₹591.39 crore was spent on advertisements and publicity. It was largely seen due to the Lok Sabha election year.
What about Congress?
Like the BJP, the Congress saw a sharp rise in donations in 2023-2024 as the party's total contributions increased by 320%, from ₹268.62 crore in 2022-2023 to ₹1,129.66 crore in 2023-2024.
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Electoral bonds comprised 73% of the Congress’s donations, increasing from ₹171.02 crore the previous year to ₹828.36 crore. The Congress’s election expenses rose to ₹619.67 crore in 2023-24 from ₹192.55 crore in 2022-2023.
The reports suggest that the Congress saw a higher increase in contributions in the election year as compared to the BJP.
Trinamool Congress
According to the Trinamool Congress's annual audit report for 2023-2024, Mamata Banerjee's party’s income increased to ₹646.39 crore from ₹333.46 crore the previous year. Electoral bonds accounted for about 95% of its income, The Indian Express reported.
Supreme Court strikes down electoral bonds
In a landmark verdict in February last year, just months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the Supreme Court scrapped the Centre's electoral bonds scheme of anonymous political funding, calling it “unconstitutional” and ordering disclosure of the bond's donors.
Holding that the 2018 scheme was "violative" of the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression and right to information, a five-judge Constitution bench headed by then Chief Justice DY Chandrachud also rejected the Centre's contention that it was meant to bring about transparency and curb black money in political funding.
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