A recent viral post on social media claiming that regional political parties received a greater share of donations through electoral bonds compared to the Bharatiya Janata Party is misleading.
Political Kida, a pro-right-wing social media page, pushed out a post on Instagram, X and Facebook, in response to India Today's news anchor Rajdeep Sardesai's post. Sardesai had stated that the BJP received the majority of electoral bond funds over the past decade. In contrast, Political Kida posted a graphic aiming to show the "reality" of the electoral bond distribution, claiming that regional political parties got the highest amount of donations as electoral bonds, as compared to BJP.
The page's presentation of electoral bonds data cannot be used to counter the claim by Sardesai as they represent two separate data points.
The misleading claim emerged after the Supreme Court of India, on February 15, declared the Union government's electoral bond scheme as unconstitutional and prohibited the issuance of fresh bonds.
Introduced in 2018, the scheme permitted the State Bank of India to maintain confidentiality on the purchasers of electoral bonds. Under the scheme, neither the donors nor the political parties were required to disclose each other's identity. The scheme allowed an individual or a corporate entity to purchase an electoral bond in the denominations of ₹1,000, ₹10,000, ₹1 lakh, ₹10 lakhs and ₹ 1 crore and donate it to political parties of their choosing. Subsequently. the political parties could then use the funds at their discretion.
How and why is the claim misleading? A fact-check
Political Kida culled out Sardesai's X post which highlighted that the bulk of the electoral bond had gone to BJP. The page juxtaposed Sardesai's claim with their own, claiming that regional parties received the majority of donations as electoral bonds, without specifying the time period. However, the infographic's presentation is misleading as it may imply that the BJP received the least amount of electoral bonds.
Moreover, the page cherry-picked data of the top 8 national and regional political parties from two different financial years. This is incorrect as data from two different years cannot be combined.
For Biju Janata Dal (BJD), All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) and Indian National Congress (INC), the page used the latest data from FY 2022-23. Whereas for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) they used data from FY 2021-22.
Sardesai's claim about BJP receiving the bulk of the electoral bond is true.
Between FY 2017-18 and FY 2022-23, BJP received a total of Rs 6,566.125 crore in contributions through electoral bonds, surpassing all other political parties, as per the annual audit reports published by The Election Commission of India and its analysis by the Association of Demographic Reforms (ADR). This means that more than half of the total donations went to the ruling political party.
It's important to note that in most audit reports of political parties, there's a section labeled "Donations/Grants/Contributions". Electoral bonds fall under this section. For some political parties, it's simply categorised as donations and contributions. However, for the BJP, it falls under "Voluntary Contributions."
With regard to the claim, the left side of the image shows which party received the highest donations from electoral bonds and the right side shows how much of the income of a party is from electoral bonds in a given year, Shelly Mahajan, Program & Research Officer at ADR told BOOM."Putting these data points together (even if correct in themselves) can be misleading for a reader." said Mahajan
"A political party may receive donations from various sources including the electoral bonds or in other cases only from a single type of source," she added.
The INC received the second largest portion of donations, totalling Rs 1,123.31 crore of the total share, followed by AITC with Rs 1,092.9876 crore, BRS with Rs 912.6899 crore, among others, for the past six financial years up to FY 2022-23.
The AAP received just over 94 crore in past six financial years, significantly less compared to other top political parties. However, AAP's donations via electoral bonds have doubled compared to FY2021-22, from about 25 crore to 45 crore.
Further, when focusing on finances solely through electoral bonds for regional political parties in FY 2022-23, BJD, AITC, DMK, among others, are among the top list of recipients.
For example, BJD, led by Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, received 100% of its donations in the FY 2022-23 via electoral bonds. Under section Schedule 5, titled, Grants/Donations/Contributions, they received Rs 152 crore in FY 2022-23.
Similarly, AITC received 99.4 percent, or Rs 325 crore, of its total donations worth Rs 327 crore in the form of electoral bonds in FY 2022-23. Over 99 percent of the DMK's donations, totalling Rs 186 crore, were received in the form of electoral bonds as well. Out of the total 186 crore received, 185 crore came from corporate donors.
Hence, it is true that regional parties like BJD, AITC and DMK receive the majority of their donations through electoral bonds. But unlike these regional parties, the BJP receives a significant amount of donations (aside from electoral bonds) through alternative channels. In FY 2022-23, BJP received over Rs 2,120 crore via voluntary contributions. Out of this, over Rs 1,294 crore or 61% of the total contributions were donations through electoral bonds, as per BOOM's analysis of the ECI's audit reports.
This means that over 825 crores solely came through other contributions such as donations from individual donors, companies and organisations, welfare bodies and others.