Political News: Telangana News: Unknown sources gave TRS Rs 89 crore, top for a regional party

(This story originally appeared in on Nov 12, 2021)

HYDERABAD: Three big regional parties — TRS, TDP and YSR Congress — in Telangana and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh have received the major part of their funds from ‘unknown sources’ in 2019-20, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said in a report.

ADR, an NGO which works in the area of electoral and political reforms, said the total income of the regional parties from unknown sources stood at Rs 446 crore, which is 55 per cent of their total income in 2019-20. The overall income of 25 regional political parties in the financial year was Rs 803 crore.

The NGO said some of the top regional parties that accrued the substantial part of their income from unknown sources were TRS at Rs 89 crore, TDP Rs 81.6 crore, Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSRC Rs 74.7 crore, Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal Rs 50.5 crore and MK Stalin’s DMK Rs 45.5 crore.

“An analysis of their income tax returns and donation statements filed with the Election Commission shows that the sources remain largely unknown. At present, political parties are not required to reveal the name of individuals or organisations giving less than Rs 20,000. As a result, a substantial amount of funds cannot be traced and are from ‘unknown’ sources,” said ADR.

Out of 53 regional parties, only 28 have filed both their annual audit and contribution reports, it said. The remaining 16 parties have not submitted either of the reports. None of two reports of nine regional parties is available on ECI website.

Annual audit and contribution reports of regional parties such as AAP, Lok Janshakti Party (Bihar) and IUML were available on website, but parties’ donation declarations show discrepancies for financial year of 2019-20. “These parties have not been analysed in report,” ADR said.