BJP gets lion’s share from listed cos

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have got the lion’s share of electoral donations from listed companies, ahead of the general elections this year.

A Business Standard analysis of electoral bond data, collated by tracker myneta.info, shows BJP’S total share at 72.4 per cent in 2023 and 2024. The analysis is based on a sample of 68 companies for which data was compiled from Capitaline which matched the donor names made available by the Election Commission (EC).

The EC on Thursday released identification numbers which match donations to parties. The BJP got ~233 crore worth of donations in 2023 for the sample which had ~347 crore worth of electoral bond donations. The share rises to 100 per cent in 2024 (data available till January). The entire worth of donations (~65 crore) in 2024 went to the BJP.

The Congress was a distant second in 2023 with ~81 crore, or 23 per cent of the donations. Others include the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (~3.5 crore), YSR Congress Party (Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party) with ~9 crore, the Biju Janata Dal (~15 crore), the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (~5 crore) and the Bharat

Rashtra Samithi (~0.5 crore). They collectively received ~33 crore in 2023 or less than 10 per cent of the total donations in the sample. The numbers may not include donations made through unlisted subsidiaries.

A similar story played out in 2019 when the BJP got ~217 crore out of the total ~237 crore donated by listed firms. This works out to over 90 per cent of the total donations. This also includes donations made later in the year, after the election results were declared. The 2019 numbers also reveal a share of less than seven per cent for the Congress. The Shiv Sena and the Shiromani Akali Dal got two per cent each.

The total value since 2022 is nearly ~1,000 crore in the sample under consideration.