New Delhi:As per the Association for Democratic Reforms,the BharatiyaJanata Party’s (BJP) total reported income of Rs 1,034.27 crore was 4.6 times that of the Congress’s figure. The ADR report released on Wednesday adds another dimension to this asymmetry in incomes of the two major political parties in India. In 2016-17, the BJP got Rs 532.27 crore in donations above Rs 20,000, which is more than 12 times the money Congress got in similar donations.

A BJP spokesperson declined to comment. Congress spokesman RPN Singh said his party had questioned the introduction of electoral bonds and maintained that the biggest beneficiary of these bonds will be the ruling party, which will “coerce and threaten” the people for donations. “Everybody knows why BJP gets highest donations. The suit-boot government that has waived off loans worth Rs 1.2 lakh crore of big industrialists will obviously get more donations,” he told reporters.

ADR collects these statistics from income tax declarations by political parties. Political funding laws in India do not require disclosure of a donor’s identity for donations below Rs 20,000. Hence, it has been a practice to take declared donations above this amount as a proxy for genuine corporate political funding.

These statistics suggest that BJP’s ability to garner funds becomes even bigger when it is dealing with big business. The fact that Rs 251.22 crore of the BJP’s Rs 532.27 crore worth of donations in this category has come from just one source, Satya Electoral Trust, buttresses this argument.

A long-term analysis of these statistics gives another interesting insight. It is expected that the party in power will have a greater income than the one in opposition as it can run patronage networks more effectively. This was the case from 2004-05 to 2012-13, when the Congress always reported greater income than the BJP. The BJP overtook the Congress in 2013-14, which too is understandable given the fact that the BJP was widely seen a party which would win the 2014 general elections.