BJP cornered most money from corporates

The BJP cornered most of the political contributions from the corporate world raised by Prudent Electoral Trust, the biggest fund collector, in 2017-18.

Prudent gave Rs 144 crore to the BJP out of the Rs 169 crore it raised in the last fiscal, giving Rs 10 crore to the Congress and another Rs 5 crore to the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).

Close to 90% of all corporate donations to the electoral trusts have gone to Prudent in the past four years, though the role of these trusts may diminish with the launch of electoral bonds for funding political parties.

The BJP got Rs 144 crore in 18 instalments during April 2017 to March 2018 while the Congress got four cheques in 2017 and the BJD three in late 2017 and January 2018.

The biggest donor of s 52 crore to Prudent was DLF Group, followed by Bharti Group (Rs 33 crore), Shroff Group's UPL (Rs 22 crore) and Gujarat's Torrent Group (Rs 20 crore). These four companies have consistently led funding to Prudent, which has been making its largest contribution to the BJP for the past four years. Other main donors to Prudent in the last fiscal were: DCM Shriram (Rs 13 crore), Cadila Group (Rs 10 crore), and Haldia Energy (Rs 8 crore).

In the past, Prudent was donating to half a dozen political parties, including Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Samajwadi Party (SP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).

The Economic Times, that gleaned data of contributions to various parties, noted that there are as many as 22 registered electoral trusts, but only half a dozen are functional.

Its analysis shows that almost 85% of the funds raised by them went into the BJP's kitty.