Congress needs cash on call to topple Modi

Shortages affecting both election campaigning and organisational mobility

India’s main opposition Congress party is facing a financial crisis that could undermine its ability to wrest power from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s wealthy Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019.

For the past five months, Congress leadership has stopped sending the funds required to run its offices in various states, party officials with knowledge of the matter said, asking not to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to the media. To overcome the crisis, Congress has urged members to step up contributions and asked officials to cut expenses, they said.

Led by Rahul Gandhi, the party’s steady flow of money from industrialists has all but dried up, leaving a cash crunch so serious that it’s been forced to crowdfund for a candidate.

“We don’t have money,” said Divya Spandana, who leads the Congress Party’s social media department. Compared with the BJP, she said her party is not getting much funding via electoral bonds — a new method for cash donation to political parties — which may force Congress to opt for more online crowdsourcing to raise money.

Modi’s string of electoral wins engineered along with his key aide and party president Amit Shah have decimated the space once occupied by the Congress Party. At last count, BJP rules with its allies in 20 states, while the Congress now controls just two big states, down from 15 in 2013. Big business has migrated away from the Congress, said Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow for South Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. “Headed into 2019, the BJP has a decisive fund-raising advantage.”

Congress earned one-fourth of the funds than the BJP in the financial year ended March 2017. The BJP declared an income of Rs10.34 billion ($152 million or Dh557.8 million) during this period, an increase of 81 per cent from a year ago, according to Association for Democratic Reforms. The Congress, in comparison, received Rs2.25 billion, a drop of 14 per cent from previous year. The shortages were affecting both election campaigning and organisational mobility, said one senior Congress official.

Without campaign funds, the Congress will face considerable hardship going into 2019, said Jagdeep Chhokar, founder and trustee of the Association for Democratic Reforms.