In election year, BJP cornered 55% of all funds donated to political parties

Two months before the Lok Sabha elections were held in 2024, anonymous electoral bonds were struck down and details made public by the Supreme Court in February and March.

The disclosures revealed that the largest beneficiary of electoral bonds – opaque monetary instruments that allowed corporations and individuals to donate money to parties anonymously – was the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The biggest contributor to the BJP’s kitty between April 2019 and January 2024 was the Hyderabad-based Megha group of companies, which gave Rs 664 crore to the party through electoral bonds.

A year later, fresh income disclosures by the BJP for 2023-’24 show Megha remained its largest single donor for the year, donating Rs 350 crore to the party through bonds. The bonds were purchased before the Supreme Court’s February verdict after which no further sale of bonds took place.

The new data released in January 2025 reveals much continuity in the way India’s ruling party gets its finances – but there is also some change. Here are three trends visible in the data.

The BJP continued to get the lion’s share of all political finance in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election.

As Scroll had reported last year, between 2019 and 2023, the BJP received Rs 8,252 crore through electoral bonds – just over 50% of…

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