BJP has been setting its mark much ahead of its rival national parties when it comes to donations. Being the Central ruling party, it has been bagging donations from across all walks of life and the latest report has revealed that corporates are marching with their donations to the party. In the overall donation tally, nearly 80% of corporate donations were done to the BJP in the financial year 2019-20. 

The report was published by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and as per its analysis, the corporate and business entities have donated Rs 921.95 crore to the national parties in 2019-20 and of 921.95 crore, BJP has banked the donation of whopping Rs 720 crore. The report has also highlighted that the donations from corporates to the national parties had increased by 109 per cent between the financial year 2017-18 and 2018-19.

The analysis was done on the basis of details given by the parties to the Election Commission of India of donors who have made donations above Rs 20,000 in a financial year. The five parties whose donations were analysed include the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian National Congress (INC), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM). 

Out of these five national parties, BJP had received the maximum donations of Rs 720.407 crore from 2,025 corporate donors during FY 2019-20, followed by the Congress party with the donation of Rs 133.04 crore from 154 donors, and the NCP with Rs 57.086 crore from 36 corporate donors. On the other hand, the CPM has declared no income from corporate donations for 2019-20. 

As per the report, Prudent Electoral Trust was the top donor to the BJP and the Congress in 2019-20. It has donated 38 times in a year to the two parties and the total donation it has made to the two parties amounts to Rs 247.75 crore. The ADR's analysis said, "The BJP declared receiving Rs 216.75 crore and Congress received Rs 31 crore from the Prudent Electoral Trust." 

It has stated that the NCP has received major donations from BG Shirke Construction Technology Pvt Ltd during 2019-20. The national parties had received donations of Rs 573.18 crore in 2014-15, during the 16th Lok Sabha polls, and the scale of donations has been increasing rapidly as in five years, these parties have bagged donations of Rs 921 crore in 2019-2, during the 17th Lok Sabha polls. 

Corporate donations received in 2019-20 had constituted 24.62 per cent of the total corporate donations made between 2012-13 and 2019-20. The report has divided the contributions from corporate/business houses into 15 sectors/categories and these sectors include manufacturing, power and oil, mining, construction, exports/imports, and real estate. 

ADR's analysis further revealed that the electoral trusts were the biggest donors to the national parties during 2019-20 contributing a total amount of Rs 397.82 crore - about 43 per cent. The manufacturing sector was the second-highest overall contributor in 2019-20, contributing a total amount of Rs 146.388 crore.  During this period, BJP has received the highest amount of Rs 323.32 crore as donations through electoral trusts while the Congress had received Rs 71 crore and Trinamool and NCP had received Rs 2 crore and Rs 1.50 crore respectively.