Corporate trust donations to political parties triple after electoral bonds scrapped; who got what
The surge comes months after the Supreme Court, in February 2024, struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme, which had allowed anonymous political funding. Since then, electoral trusts -- which offer partial anonymity -- have increasingly become the preferred channel for corporate donors.
New Delhi: Corporate donations routed through electoral trusts more than tripled to Rs 3,811 crore in 2024–25, a year after the Supreme Court scrapped the Electoral Bond Scheme. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged as the biggest beneficiary of this scheme.
According to disclosures submitted to the Election Commission of India (ECI), nine electoral trusts donated Rs 3,811 crore to political parties during the year. Of this, the BJP alone received Rs 3,112 crore, about 82 per cent of the total, while the Congress received Rs 299 crore. All other parties combined accounted for Rs 400 crore.
The amount donated through trusts was more than three times the Rs 1,218 crore recorded in 2023–24. As of December 20, 2025, 13 of the 19 registered electoral trusts had filed reports. Four trusts -- Janhit, Paribartan, Jaihind and Jaybharath -- declared zero donations.
SC scrapped Electoral Bond Scheme in Feb 2024
The surge comes months after the Supreme Court, in February 2024, struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme, which had allowed anonymous political funding. Since then, electoral trusts -- which offer partial anonymity -- have increasingly become the preferred channel for corporate donors.
Among the trusts, Prudent Electoral Trust was the largest contributor, distributing Rs 2,668 crore to 15 parties. The BJP received Rs 2,180.7 crore from Prudent, while the Congress got Rs 216.3 crore. The Trinamool Congress and YSR Congress Party received Rs 92 crore and Rs 88 crore, respectively.
The Progressive Electoral Trust, linked to the Tata Group, donated Rs 914.97 crore, of which 80.8 per cent (Rs 757.6 crore) went to the BJP. The Congress received Rs 77.3 crore, while eight other parties shared Rs 10 crore. Other major contributors included the New Democratic Electoral Trust (Mahindra Group-backed), which donated Rs 150 crore to the BJP, and Harmony and Triumph Electoral Trusts, which together contributed over Rs 50 crore, largely to the ruling party.
BJP's kitty rises to over Rs 6k crore
Congress and several regional parties saw a sharp fall in trust-based funding compared with the electoral bond era. The Congress received Rs 313 crore through trusts in 2024–25, down from Rs 828 crore via bonds in 2023–24. The Trinamool Congress's receipts fell to Rs 184.5 crore from Rs 612 crore, while funding for the Biju Janata Dal dropped to Rs 60 crore from Rs 245.5 crore and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi to Rs 15 crore from Rs 85 crore.
Separately, the BJP's own contribution report for 2024–25 shows that its total donations rose to Rs 6,088 crore -- about 53 per cent higher than the Rs 3,967 crore it received in 2023–24. Electoral trusts accounted for Rs 3,744 crore, or around 61 per cent of the party's total collections, while the rest came from individuals and corporate donors.
The BJP's corpus in 2024–25 was nearly 12 times larger than that of the Congress, which reported donations of Rs 522.13 crore. Together, contributions to a dozen Opposition parties totalled Rs 1,343 crore, less than a quarter of what the BJP received.