Donations to Congress jump five-fold to Rs146 crore

Still far behind the BJP, but the Congress has seen a fivefold increase in donations at Rs 146 crore in 2018-19, the latest data show. The party had received a mere Rs 26 crore during the previous fiscal year As per the Congress’ contribution report submitted to the Election Commission of India on August 30, the party didn’t get any funding through electoral bonds while the bulk of money (Rs 98 crore) came from electoral trusts.

The Progressive Electoral Trust (originally backed by Tata group) is the biggest donor with Rs 55 crore, Prudent Electoral Trust (chiefly backed by Bharti Airtel group and DLF ) donated Rs 39 crore. The Aditya Birla General Trust and Samaj donated another Rs 2 crore each.

Prudent, which gave Rs 144 crore to the BJP in the previous financial year, had donated Rs 10 crore to Congress last year.


While big corporate houses are missing from the Congress’ donors list, the few who stand out are: Gwalior Alcobrew from Madhya Pradesh ( Rs 7 crore), HEG and NIRMA group ( Rs 2.5 crore each) and Aparna Infrastructure Housing Ltd ( Rs 1 cr). Gaytari Constructions and Sobha developers continue to donate to the party like always.

Some of the biggest individual contributors to the party include Fouzia Khan from Bangalore with Rs 4.4 crore. Congress man H A Iqbal Hussain, who has the same address as Khan, pitched in with another Rs 3 crore. Joseph Martin Pinto sent in a crore.

Party president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi contributed Rs 54,000 each. Kapil Sibal gave Rs 2 lakh while Pawan Bansal and Manish Tewari donated Rs 35,000 each. Navjot Singh Sidhu and his wife also donated Rs 35,000 each.

Manipal Group’s TV Mohandas Pai has also donated Rs 35 lakh.

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party is the only other national party to have submitted its contribution report and has reported no funds received over Rs 20,000.

BJP is yet to submit its contribution report for 2018-19 but figures from 2017-18 show the vast funding gap between the ruling party and the Opposition.

BJP raised Rs 1,027 crore in 2017-18 and spend Rs 758 crore as per its audit report. Prudent Electoral Trust donated it ?140 crore and over 945 donations through electoral bonds have also gone to the BJP so far.