Money failed, BJP now fudging voter list: Siddaramaiah

Bengaluru: Chief minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday accused the BJP of resorting to voter list manipulation and weakening of electoral safeguards after its "money power" failed to deliver results in the Lok Sabha election last year.

"It is precisely because money power failed that new and more dangerous threats to India's elections are now emerging. We are witnessing growing attempts to manipulate voter lists, weaken electoral safeguards and compromise the neutrality of the Election Commission itself. When financial domination did not deliver total control, the focus has shifted to rigging the electoral process," he said in a post on X.

His comments follow the Election Commission of India's disclosures on political funding. "In the financial year 2024-25,- the first full year after the Supreme Court scrapped the Electoral Bond 'Scam' - the BJP received ₹6,088 crore in donations, a staggering 53% increase over the previous year," the CM said.


Electoral bonds were struck down because they institutionalised opaque and corrupt political funding. Yet even after their scrapping, donations to the BJP have increased sharply. "This confirms what we have consistently stated - Electoral Bonds enabled corruption, but the BJP's misuse of power extends far beyond any single scheme," Siddaramaiah said.

In 2024, the BJP's corpus stood close to ₹6,100 crore, while the Congress received ₹522 crore. The combined donations of a dozen opposition parties amounted to ₹1,343 crore, less than a fourth of what the BJP alone collected. Such extreme concentration of money destroys the level playing field and undermines democratic competition, the CM said.