Political donations to parties are a routine part of India’s political funding landscape, with individuals and organizations regularly contributing to parties of their choice. However, following the Supreme Court’s February 2024 ruling that the electoral bonds scheme was unconstitutional, a new report from the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has shed light on how donation patterns shifted for regional parties across the country. Based on details submitted by parties to the Election Commission of India, the report covers donations exceeding ₹20,000 received by 40 regional political parties through electoral bonds during 2023-24 and 2024-25.
For 2023-24, the report found that Trinamool Congress received the highest donations nationally, at ₹612 crore, followed by BRS in second place with ₹495.52 crore. Biju Janata Dal ranked third with ₹245 crore, TDP fourth with ₹174 crore, and YSRCP fifth with ₹121 crore. Regional parties collectively received ₹1,820.02 crore through electoral bonds that year. Notably, before the bonds were scrapped, total donations above ₹20,000 across all political parties amounted to just ₹347.69 crore — a figure that rose sharply to ₹1,051 crore in 2024-25 after the scheme’s abolition.
Together, DMK, Trinamool Congress, YSRCP, and TDP accounted for more than 60 percent of all declared donations across the two financial years. TDP led in 2023-24 with ₹100.18 crore in donations, though this fell to ₹83 crore in 2024-25. YSRCP’s donations rose sharply from ₹62.50 crore across just 4 donations in 2023-24 to ₹140 crore across 37 donations in 2024-25. Jana Sena Party’s donations declined from ₹36 crore to ₹25 crore over the same period.
In 2024-25, DMK topped the list with ₹365.78 crore in donations, followed by Trinamool Congress with ₹184.96 crore, YSRCP with ₹140 crore, TDP with ₹83 crore, and AIADMK with ₹66 crore. BRS saw one of the steepest declines, with donations falling from ₹85 crore across 8 donations in 2023-24 to just ₹15 crore across 4 donations in 2024-25.
Overall, the ADR report found that donations to regional political parties declined by more than 82 percent following the discontinuation of the electoral bonds scheme, marking a significant shift in how parties have raised funds since the Supreme Court’s ruling.