In a stark display of financial dominance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured a colossal sum in political donations during the 2024-25 fiscal year, which included the Lok Sabha elections, leaving the Indian National Congress far behind. According to the latest contribution reports published on the Election Commission of India's website, the ruling party amassed a staggering ₹6,088 crore from donors.
BJP's Funding Supremacy and Congress' Decline
This massive haul represents a significant jump from the ₹4,000 crore the BJP received in the preceding year, 2023-24. In contrast, the principal opposition party, the Congress, managed to gather only ₹522 crore in 2024-25. This figure is less than half of the ₹1,130 crore it collected in 2023-24. The BJP's total is approximately 12 times the amount received by the Congress, highlighting a vast financial chasm between the two major national parties.
The details pertain to funds received from donors who contributed more than ₹20,000, as mandated for disclosure. The data gains immense significance as 2024-25 was the first full financial year after the Supreme Court of India scrapped the Electoral Bond scheme in February 2024. This landmark judgment, which declared the anonymous donation instrument unconstitutional, has fundamentally reshaped the landscape of political financing in the country.
Electoral Trusts Become the New Powerhouses
With electoral bonds out of the picture, electoral trusts have emerged as the primary conduit for corporate political funding. These trusts, set up by multiple companies to pool and distribute contributions, are required to pass on at least 95% of the donations they receive to political parties.
Out of 19 registered electoral trusts, 13 have submitted their reports for 2024-25. The data reveals that the BJP cornered a whopping 85% of the overall funding from these trusts in the election year, a substantial increase from the 56% share it held in 2023-24.
The top donors to the BJP were overwhelmingly electoral trusts:
- Prudent Electoral Trust: ₹2,180.7 crore
- Progressive Electoral Trust: ₹757.6 crore
- AB General Electoral Trust: ₹606 crore
- New Democratic Electoral Trust: ₹150 crore
Among individual corporate entities, the Serum Institute of India donated ₹100 crore, followed by the Rungta Group (₹95 crore), Bajaj Group (₹74 crore), ITC Group (₹72.5 crore), Hero Enterprise (₹70 crore), and Vedanta Group (₹65 crore).
Congress' Donor Profile and the Prudent Trust Lead
The Congress party's funding, though markedly lower, also flowed largely through the same electoral trusts. Its top donors for 2024-25 were:
- Prudent Electoral Trust: ₹216.3 crore
- Progressive Electoral Trust: ₹77.3 crore
- Century Plywoods (India) Limited: ₹26 crore
- ITC Limited: ₹15.5 crore
- AB General Electoral Trust: ₹15 crore
Prudent Electoral Trust stood out as the single largest political funder overall. It donated ₹2,181 crore to the BJP and ₹216 crore to the Congress. A major contributor to this trust was Elevated Avenue Realty LLP, a firm linked to the engineering giant Larsen & Toubro, which gave ₹500 crore.
The shift from the opaque electoral bonds to donations routed through electoral trusts has brought a new, though still channeled, transparency to political funding. The reports now publicly name the trusts and the major corporate donors funding them, allowing for clearer tracking of financial flows into politics, even as the debate over the influence of money in elections continues.
