The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian National Congress (INC) and the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) are the only political parties that received donations from political trusts in financial year 2015-16, said a survey on Tuesday.
“Two electoral trusts made contributions to these three parties. Satya Electoral Trust donated 95.74 per cent or Rs 45 crore to BJP, while Samaj Electoral Trust donated 39.68 per cent or Rs 1 crore of its total income to BJP,” said the survey conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
The survey also said that out of total Rs 47,00,15,000 income, Satya Electoral Trust made contributions only to the BJP (Rs 45 crore) and the INC (Rs 2 crore), while Samaj Electoral Trust, with a total income of Rs 2.52 crore, gave Rs 1.5 crore to the JD-U and Rs 1 crore to the BJP.
After analysing the donations made, the ADR stated that the names of electoral trusts currently did not indicate the name of the company/ group of companies which set up the trusts.
“In order to have greater transparency regarding details of corporates which fund political parties, it would be ideal to include the name of the parent company in the name of the electoral trust,” said an ADR statement.
Thoe electoral trusts, which had not responded to and complied with the guidelines of the Election Commission of India, should be heavily penalised, it said.
It also said that all corporates should make details of their political contributions available in public domain through their websites for increasing transparency in political financing.
