Between 2005 and 2012 corporates shelled out almost Rs 380 crore in donations to political parties. A study by the Association for Democratic Reforms reveals electoral trusts and companies with varied interests in mining, real estate, power and the news paper businesses donated over Rs 127 crore to national parties, while the manufacturing sector came in second, spending about Rs 100 crore towards political donations, report CNBC-TV18's Sajeet Manghat and Ashmit Kumar.
The Congress and BJP claim to be different but there is one thing that they share.
The Aditya Birla Group's general electoral trust is the single biggest contributor to both parties with the Congress getting Rs 36.41 crore and the BJP getting Rs 26.57 crore between 2005 and 2012.
The other notable common contributors are Gujarat-based Torrent Power, which gave Rs 11.85 crore to the Congress and Rs 13 crore to BJP.
Anil Aggarwal's Vedanta Group shelled out Rs 8.78 crore through Sterlite Industries and Sesa Goa to the Congress, while the BJP got Rs 18 crore.
The Association for Democratic Reforms says businesses today account for 87 percent of all known sources of political funding, but the worrying part is unknown sources account for almost 75 percent of the total funding received by political parties.
Political parties received a total of Rs 378.89 crore from all the corporate/ business houses between FY05-12. The Congress got Rs 172.25 crore that is 92 percent of the funding from known sources while BJP got Rs 192.47 crore which is 85 percent of funding from known sources.
Trusts and companies with varied interests in mining, real-estate, power, newspapers etc. donated maximum of Rs 127.65 crore to the national parties between FY04-05 and 2011-12, while the manufacturing sector comes second, contributing a total of Rs 99.71 crore to the five national parties.
Congress received maximum donations from mining, construction, export/ import sectors at Rs 23.07 crore while the BJP received maximum donations from the real estate sector at Rs 17.01 crore.
Manufacturing sectors made 595 donations amounting to Rs 99.71 crore, while real estate made 340 donations amounting to Rs 24.10 crore.
No surprises for guessing which parties failed to woo Corporate India - the CPI got a measly Rs 11 lakhs from 13 corporates while CPM received Rs 1.78 crore from a whopping 108 corporates.
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