BJP earned ₹27.5L per hour in FY 2018-19 through electoral bonds: Report

Electoral bonds have played a vital role in helping the BJP double its income from ₹1,027 crore in 2017-18 to ₹2,410 crore in the 2018-19 fiscal, revealed a report published by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

According to the report, electoral bonds introduced by the Modi government in 2017 have earned the saffron party almost two-thirds or 60.2 per cent — ₹1,450 crore — of its 2018-19 income.

Electoral bonds allow individuals and businesses to anonymously send donations to political parties.

With a ₹1,383 crore jump in income in just one year, the party has earned more than twice of the incomes of its political rivals put together.

Electoral bonds turned out to be the most favored tool of donation to the political parties. More than half of the total funding is received by all the national political parties is in the form of electoral bonds which are worth ₹1931.43 crores in total.

Congress and AITC were two other national parties to receive donations in the form of electoral bonds. They received electoral bonds worth ₹383.26 crore and ₹97.28 crore, respectively. It accounted for 41.7 (Congress) and 50.5 (AITC) per cent of their total funding of that year.

Indian National Congress (Congress) was the second highest-earning party with 918 crore rupees to their funds in the same year. All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and Bahujan Samaj Party has received the funding of ₹192 crore and ₹69 crore in FY 2018-19, respectively.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) – CPM – which has filed a petition to put a stay on the scheme of electoral bonds has received the funding of around ₹100 crore. It does not include any money from electoral bonds. Communist Party of India (CPI) accounted for the least income of mere ₹7.15 crore among six national parties which declared their income.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) did not submit their audit report, hence is not included in the assessment.