FP 9 Jan 2014
The Aditya Birla Group has emerged as the top corporate donor to both the ruling Congress party as well as the opposition Bhartiya Janta Party, followed by Gujarat's Torrent Group, as declared by the parties to the Election Commission.
According to a study by the Association for Democratic Reforms and National Reforms, as much as 87 percent of the total Rs 435.87 crore national parties received during 2004-12 came from corporates. Business houses paid Rs 378.89 crore to various political parties.
Of the national parties, the BJP received the maximum donations of Rs 192.47 crore from 1,334 donors from the corporate/ business sector followed by the Indian National Congress which got Rs 172.25 crore from 418.
The Aditya Birla Group donated the maximum amount of Rs 36.41 crore to the Congress and Rs 26.57 crore to BJP. Gujarat-based Torrent Power donated Rs 13 crore to the BJP and Rs 11 crore to Congress while Bharti Electoral Trust of Bharti Group donated Rs 11 crore to the Congress and Asianet V Holding Rs 10 crore to the BJP.
Table from the ADR report
The Congress and BJP also received foreign funding between 2003-04 and 2011-12 of Rs 983.50 lakh and Rs 1,942.50 lakh, respectively, by companies such as the Vedanta group (Sesa Goa, The Madras Aluminium Co, Sterlite Industries), Public and Political Awareness Trust of Vedanta, Hyatt Regency and Dow Chemicals.
Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) got Rs 1 crore each from Ambuja Cement, Hindustan Construction Company and Infina Finance.
Check out the total donations to national parties by corporate/ business houses:
Table: Share of donations from corporate/ business houses in total donations to national parties between FY 2004-05 to 2011-12
In comparison to the national parties, communist ones got much less. The Communist Party of India got Rs 11 lakh, and the Communist Party India (Marxist), or CPI(M), Rs 1.8 crore.
The study also showed that 92% of the Congress's voluntary contributions is from corporate/ business houses while the corresponding figure for the BJP is 85%.
Other highlights:
Congress received maximum contributions from trusts & group of companies (Rs 70.28 crores) while the BJP received maximum donation from the manufacturing sector (Rs 58.18 crore) and power & oil (Rs 17.06 crore).
The Congress received the maximum donations (Rs 23.07 crore) from the mining, construction and export/ import sectors. For the BJP, hte maximum donations came from the real estate sector -- Rs 17.01 crore.
Check out the full list of donors below:
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