BJP's income up by 81.18%, Congress's suffers from fall: ADR report

New Delhi: The electoral success of Bharatiya Janata Party has been proportional to the rise in its income with the party's income seeing a rise of 81.18 per cent between 2015-16 and 2016-17. In the same period, BJP's main political adversary - Congress - has seen a fall in its income by 14 per cent.

According to report by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) - an NGO working for political and electoral reforms in the country, BJP's declared an income of Rs 1,034.27 crore to the Election Commission. This is a rise of Rs 463.41 crore from the previous submission made. The party also declared expenditures accruing to Rs 710.057 crore during 2016-17 while Congress incurred an expenditure of Rs 321.66 crore which is Rs 96.30 crore more than its income for the same period.

The report further finds that seven national political parties in the country have a combined income of Rs 1,559.17 crore and expenditure of Rs 1,228.26 crore. Further, these parties received a total of Rs 1,169.07 crore (74.98 per cent) income from voluntary contributions. These parties are BJP, Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Communist Party of India (CPI) and Trinamool Congress.

Donations and/or contributions, according to the report, are one of three sources of incomes declared by the political parties.

There are some key details which are relatively unknown as last month, the Lok Sabha had unanimously passed a resolution which exempted political parties from disclosing funds received from abroad since 1976.  The Lok Sabha passed 21 amendments to the Finance Bill 2018, including an amendment to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 that bans overseas corporations from funding political parties.