Donations to political parties

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When was the last time you thought about reducing your tax burdens through 80G, without knowing what that right invest should be? Contribution towards funds of political parties could be invigorating – especially if the party wins.

At Gramener, we visualized the donations received by various political parties, to trace their sources, frequency and size of donations, and to find out if they effect the election results. You can explore these at http://ibn.gramener.com/donation/.

The data collected over 7 years indicate that BJP has been the highest receiver starting 2003, except in 2005, 2006 and 2009 when Congress had an upper hand. The overall figures indicate BJP as the most societal with staggering figures of Rs 315 crores which is close to 46% of the total donations done in the past 7 years.

Interestingly, for BJP, the years in which show spikes in the trend where BJP gets defeated. Whereas, for Congress wherever they have spikes they earned governments in states.

The trends for both the parties has been represented above.

If we try to understand the donating patterns from individuals, corporates and trusts, the corporates have donated the highest in year 2009 when compared to yesteryears. This was the year when Congress came to power and the overall stats also indicate that the donation earning difference was not huge when compared to BJP.

This may be indicative of the reforms which corporates were anticipating from Indian National Congress to give some breath to the already gasping economy in the midst of World Economic crisis.

Also, the corporates have been the highest donors on an overall basis. But, watching closely, financial years 2003-04, 2006-07 & 2010-11, 2011-12 narrate a different story altogether where the highest donors were Trusts & Individuals respectively.

 

 

Moving on to the companies who have contributed the most, they have set up Electoral Trusts, which sewed up monetary transactions to political entities ensuring proper tax benefits and legalization, transparency of such transactions. The trends also indicate that companies in the direct consumer products have contributed the most.

Torrent Power, started in 1996 has been the only power sector enterprise which has engulfed huge cash transactions in its name every year starting 2007-08. Interestingly, the share prices also surged for the following years depicted as below:

Source: https://www.google.com/finance

There are also individuals who have donated only to single party and such interest remains pretty unexplainable. For example, huge sums have babbled to parties like MNS, AIADMK through individuals on a continuous basis. The imagery is as under explaining the trend and contribution made on an overall basis.

Donations do not affect the party’s performance in election years but eventually help in building cash reserves. Indian National Congress, which was in power may not have so much difficulty in governing itself on monetary terms which can also explain a lower percentage of donations towards the ruling party.

Visit http://ibn.gramener.com/donation/ to explore this data.