Although the electoral bond has been discontinued, the rain of money in election donations continues. Earlier, crores of rupees were received in electoral bonds and now in electoral trusts. The donations received through the trust in the one and a half months after the closure of the bond were about three times the amount received through the electoral trust in the 10 and a half months before the closure of the electoral bond. The Prudent Electoral Trust, which donates to political parties through the electoral trust, received a total of Rs 1075.7 crore in donations in 2023-24. Three-fourths of this came from February 16 to March 31, 2024, while donations of Rs 278.6 crore were received from April 1, 2023 to February 15, 2024. According to the new report, about 70 percent of the share belonged to 15 business groups. ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India and DLF gave the highest donations of Rs 100 crore each.
To bring transparency in the donations received by political parties, the UPA government had notified the Electoral Trust Scheme on January 31, 2013. Any registered company can form an electoral trust and various companies donate to it. 95 percent of the donations have to be given to registered political parties. The Supreme Court had rejected the Electoral Bond Scheme-2018 on February 15 last year, saying that it violated the Right to Information. The Electoral Bond Scheme had the option of anonymity for donors. With this bond, political parties were being funded anonymously. Under Section 182 of the Companies Act, it was provided that no company can donate more than 7.5 percent of its annual profits, but electoral bonds were kept out of it. The Supreme Court, while rejecting the electoral bond scheme, had directed the State Bank of India to provide data to the Election Commission on who bought electoral bonds of how much value for which party. Political parties had received Rs 16,518 crore through the scheme implemented since 2018. The face value of about 94 percent of the bonds was Rs 1 crore.
The Election Commission has put the donation report of the Prudent Electoral Trust for the last financial year on its website, according to which donations of Rs 1075.7 crore were received for political parties in 2023-24, while Rs 363 crore were received in 2022-23. The number of donors has increased to 83, while it was 22 before that. Although an increase in political donations before general elections is not unusual, what is interesting is that from April 1, 2023 to February 15, 2024, donations of Rs 278.6 crore were received, while from February 16, 2024 to March 31, 2024, it increased to Rs 797.1 crore. Electoral trusts have to declare every donation received along with the name of the donor. Along with this, the name of the political parties has to be mentioned, although it is not said how much was donated by which corporate. According to the Election Commission website, only five trusts have declared donations: Prudent (Rs 1075.7 crore), Triumph Electoral Trust (Rs 132.5 crore), Jai Bharat Electoral Trust (Rs 9 crore), Parivartan Electoral Trust (Rs 1 crore) and Innovating Electoral Trust (Rs 17.2 lakh). According to the report, the donations of Rs 1075.7 crore received by the Prudent Trust were distributed among six parties. The highest amount was Rs 723.8 crore to the BJP, Rs 156.4 crore to the Congress, Rs 85 crore to the BRS, Rs 72.5 crore to the YSR Congress Party, Rs 33 crore to the Telugu Desam Party and Rs 5 crore to the Jana Sena Party. The Trinamool gave Rs 127.5 crore to the BJP and Rs 5 crore to the DMK. The Jai Bharat Trust donated Rs 5 crore to the BJP, Rs 3 crore to the DMK and Rs 1 crore to the AIADMK. The entire amount of the investment went to the BJP. Interestingly, the Parivartan Trust did not disclose the identity of its donors. Although the electoral bonds have been closed, the BJP is still receiving the highest amount of donations.
