Money Involved In Politics
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Economy Falling But Political Parties Getting Richer

India’s GDP may or may not grow but the bottomline is that the money of political parties is definitely increasing. The political parties are getting richer. The ruling party, Congress has made a total of Rs 1,662 crore in the last five years till 2011-12 with BJP at the second place with Rs 852 crore.

The maximum hike in their income was observed in 2009 when parliamentary elections were held. Income Tax return statements of these parties tell that Congress’s annual income increased from Rs 220 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 497 crore in 2009-10. And it made around Rs 400 crore during each next year. Similarly BJP’s income increased Rs 124 to Rs 224 in the year 2009-2010. It touched Rs 258 crore in 2010-11.

All major parties receive funds from unidentified donors according to their IT returns. The parties like Congress, BJP, NCP and BSP haven’t disclosed the names of their donors who do their major funding.

Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has been campaigning for transparency in funding of political parties and has obtained these I-T returns.It has written to the Central Board of Direct Taxes asking to look into undisclosed contributions to parties, which constitute up to 90% of their total collections.

Anil Bairwal, coordinator of ADR says, “It has been more than a year and the CBDT has not yet responded to our request though they had promised to look into the matter”. He added that such unknown sources need to be tracked to eradicate the problem of black money in political parties.

BSP, party led by Mayawati, is third in the list of highest collectors.Its income went up from Rs 70 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 182 crore in the year 2009.

During the last five years, BSP has received more than Rs 425 crore, majorly through cash donations. Most of the contributors are unknown. Earlier, the party had subverted I-T department’s moves to unearth its donors, successfully arguing that all its cash contributions were made by poor supporters out of love and affection for the party leader.

To everyone’s surprise, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has left behind Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) and Sharad Powar’s National Congress Party (NCP) in collecting money. CPM is fourth in the list having collected Rs 335 crores in last five years. SP made only Rs 200 crors during last five years and NCP was far behind with Rs 140 crore.

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  1. True Story…… Indian National Congress & Bhartiya janta party(bjp) can never run out of money…. EVER! and I am talking about the legal white money….. Black Money ka toh ^&$^&%^&$#!

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