It seems that the Corporate India is sure about BJP to come back to power in 2019. According to electoral trust, the saffron party received the highest amount of donation from the corporate India in the fiscal 2017-18. On the other hand, the Congress got a meagre amount of 10 crores only. The electoral trust collects political contributions from the corporate houses. The trust has maintained that various leading corporate houses are donors to the trust, including Hero MotoCorp, Bharti Airtel, Jubilant Foodworks, GMMCO, National Engineering Industries, Orient Cement, DLF, JK Tyre and Industries, Indiabulls Housing Finance and Kalpataru Power Transmission, and others.
In fiscal 2017-18, Prudent Electoral Trust generated a total 169 crore, out of which 144 crore went to the BJP while a measly 10 crore was donated to the Congress and the regional party BJD got INR 5 crores.
In 2016-17 too, the BJP had received the highest share of the donations made to political parties by the Prudent Electoral Trust. Of the total Rs 283.72 crore disbursed by the trust, the BJP had bagged almost 89% of contributions. The BJP got Rs 252 crore while the Congress was just offered Rs 14.9 crore. The remaining amount was shared among RJD, AAP, RLD, SP and SAD.
According to the trust’s report, this year, DLF was the biggest donor to Prudent with Rs 52 crore. The Bharti group was the second biggest donor with Rs 33 crore, followed by the Shroff Group’s UPL with Rs 22 crore. The next biggest donor was Gujarat’s Torrent Group at Rs 20 crore. DCM Shriram, the Cadila Group, and Haldia Energy also donated Rs 13 crore, Rs 10 crore and Rs 8 crore respectively.
Since its inception in 2014, the Prudent Electoral Trust has donated almost 600 crore to the BJP out of its total collection of Rs 726.13 crore.
Other electoral trusts are also following the same pattern, Aditya Birla group’s- the AB General Electoral Trust- gave Rs 21 crore in FY18, of which Rs 12.5 crore went to BJP, the Congress party managed to get only 1 crore while the BJD got 8 crore.
A major chunk of donations of all other major electoral trusts is going to the BJP’s account. It indicates an unprecedented level of confidence, in a crucial election year, that leading and respected corporate houses have on the BJP. All these corporate houses are well respected and have worked a lot for nation’s development. Their trust on the BJP implies that they also support pro-people, pro-nation and pro-development policies of the party, and have complete trust on the leadership of PM Modi. They want BJP to return to power and that is the reason why they make huge political donations to the party.
Monetary resources are very important in order to win elections in any democratic set-up. The elections in India cost far less than countries like United States, still the role of donation becomes important in any country. The amount of donation any party receives is directly proportional to its electoral prospects in upcoming elections. The BJP is currently the richest political party of India. BJP receives the largest chunk of political funding that stands at 1,034 crore, almost equal to the total funding of the seven national political parties in previous fiscal year and two third of the funding to national parties this year. On the other hand, the corporate houses are not funding Congress party for the last few years because they are confident about party’s bleak future. The anti-business activities by Congress party like opposing the GST, land reforms, labor reforms etc have miffed the corporate houses, and to further exacerbate the things for the Congress, Rahul Gandhi is leading the party.