Media sources have received this data from the Election Commission and according to the report, the BJP received electoral bonds worth Rs 2,555 crore of the total Rs 3,355 crore worth sold in that year.<\/p>\n
This was a huge 75% leap from the Rs 1,450 crore worth of electoral bonds that the BJP had received in 2018-\u201919.<\/p>\n
Earlier the former late Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced this scheme in his Budget speech in 2017, claiming the government wanted to clean up political funding and make it a transparent process. However, the system has lost all transparency.<\/p>\n
These bonds are issued four times every year in January, April, July and October. Last year, they were issued only in January and October.<\/p>\n
Electoral bonds are monetary instruments that citizens or corporate groups can buy from a bank and give to a political party, which is then free to redeem them for money.<\/p>\n
In 2019-\u201920, the electoral bonds received by Congress dropped by 17% to Rs 318 crore as compared to the previous year, according to sources. In 2018-\u201919, the party had received Rs 383 crore from the bonds.<\/p>\n
The Trinamool Congress received Rs 100.46 crore worth of electoral bonds, the Nationalist Congress Party Rs 29.25 crore, the Shiv Sena Rs 41 crore, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Rs 45 crore, Rashtriya Janata Dal Rs 2.5 crore, and the Aam Aadmi Party Rs 18 crore.<\/p>\n
In March last year, India\u2019s seven national parties had received Rs 3,749.37 crore in the 2018-\u201919 financial year with 67% of it coming from \u201cunknown sources\u201d that cannot be traced, a report by the non-profit organization Association for Democratic Reforms had stated.<\/p>\n
The report had defined \u201cincome from known sources\u201d as donations above Rs 20,000 whose donor details were made available by the parties. Donations less than Rs 20,000 declared in tax returns as income but without identifiable sources were classified as earnings from unknown sources. Such sources include electoral bonds, coupons, relief funds, and contributions from meetings.<\/p>\n
Out of the total amount of funding, the BJP had accounted for Rs 1,612.04 crore \u2013 64% of the total income of national parties \u2013 from untraceable sources.<\/p>\n
There is absolutely no transparency in the electoral bond donations under the BJP and the entire process is anonymous since no one is expected to announce their purchase of these bonds and political parties do not need to declare the source of the money. The government says that the money is unlikely to be \u201cblack\u201d since it has to be given by cheque.<\/p>\n
Is India’s democracy being sold through “dark pool funding?” It appears that the voters’ votes are swallowed by a money-controlled monopoly by politicians. One cannot call it democracy as long as these secret funds can buy elections.<\/p>\n