After the Election Commission of India (ECI) released fresh data related to electoral bonds, news agency PTI published a report noting that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got Rs 6,986.5 crores through electoral bonds.
This report was picked up and republished by several news organisations, including The Indian Express, Business Standard, Deccan Herald, The Economic Times,NDTV, The Telegraph, and Mathrubhumi.
(Swipe to view some reports.)
(Archives of more social media posts citing this figure can be seen here, here, and here.)
But...?: The figures are misleading. The amount of Rs 6,986.5 crores is based off what the BJP disclosed in one submission to the Electoral Commission.
These numbers only show the amount of bonds the BJP got from 2018 to 2023, not what they received after September 2023.
As per the data published by the ECI on 14 March 2024 as well as 17 March 2024, the BJP's total collection through electoral bonds adds up to approximately Rs 8,770 crores.
How did we find out?: According to a report published by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the BJP got around Rs 6,060 crores between 12 April 2019 and 15 February 2024.
The ECI published data related to the BJP's encashment of electoral bonds from 7 March 2018 to 10 July 2023, on Sunday, 17 March.
From this, we went through the amounts that the BJP declared they had received from 7 March 2018 to 11 April 2019.
The party said that it received Rs 210 crores in FY 2017-18, which counts bonds that the party got until 31 March 2018.
For FY 2018-19, the BJP said that it had received Rs 1,450 crores from electoral bonds.
This data, too, only counted bonds that the party had received until 31 March 2019.
We then calculated entries for the amount that the BJP had received through electoral bonds between 1 April 2019 and 11 April 2019, which added up to Rs 10,50,06,00,000, or Rs 1,050 crores.
To find the total amount that the BJP received via electoral bonds, we added these three figures and the number mentioned in the ADR report.
In total, the Bharatiya Janata Party got approximately Rs 8,770 crores through electoral bonds.
Conclusion: Several media organisations have published incorrect figures for how much the BJP got through electoral bonds since 2018.
(With inputs from Abhilash Mallick and Himanshi Dahiya.)
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