The ruling BJD in Odisha has received a whopping Rs 291.096 crore donations from unknown sources during the 2021-22 fiscal, the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), a think tank, said in a report. This is over 94 percent of the total income of the party, the report added.
The ADR defined the unknown sources as income declared in the Annual Audit reports but without giving a source of income for donations below Rs. 20,000. Such unknown sources include ‘Donations via Electoral Bonds’, ‘sale of coupons’, ‘relief fund’, ‘miscellaneous income’, ‘voluntary contributions’, ‘contribution from meetings/ morchas’ etc.
As per the report, BJD has got a total of Rs 307 crore and 27 lakh from both known and unknown sources in the year 2021-22. Interestingly, it has only received 16 crore and 19 lakh from known sources while the remaining Rs 291 crore has been received from unknown sources.
Not just BJD, the total income of many regional parties came from unknown sources, the ADR report has revealed.
As per the ADR report, all the 27 regional parties of the country have received over 1165 crore from unknown sources while only Rs 145 crore 42 lakh has been received from known sources.
DMK tops the list with Rs 318 crore from unknown sources followed by BJD. The TRS is in the third position with Rs 153 crore in donations from unknown sources.
At present, political parties are not required to reveal the name of individuals or organisations giving less than Rs 20,000 and those who donated through electoral bonds.