Kolkata: Among 40 regional parties in the country reviewed by Association for Democratic Reforms, an organisation that promotes transparency in elections, Trinamool Congress received the second highest donations of Rs 191 crore from corporates or business houses during 2023-24 and 2024-25.According to the ADR report, which analysed 40 out of 67 regional political parties, in 2024–25, DMK emerged as the highest recipient of donations, receiving around Rs 366 crore, followed by TMC at around Rs 185 crore and YSR Congress at Rs 140 crore.In 2023-24, Trinamool received Rs 6.5 crore as donations. Of Rs 185 crore TMC received as donations in 2024-25, 99.5% (Rs 184 crore) was received through cheques/DD with incomplete donor details, the report said.During the same period, TMC declared the highest number of donations from electoral bonds, at Rs 612.5 crore, followed by Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) at Rs 495.5 crore, before it was discontinued following Supreme Court’s judgment on Feb 15, 2024.For DMK’s donations in 2024-25, the donor name was undeclared for Rs 300 crore.Cash donations declined sharply in terms of the number of donations, from 432 donations in 2023–24 to 74 donations in 2024–25. However, the total amount received through cash increased substantially during this period, from Rs 6 crore to Rs 301.5 crore. DMK received the highest donations in cash amounting to Rs 300 crore in 2024–25.“Since these cash contributions were disclosed as donations below the statutory reporting threshold of Rs 20,000, individual donor details are not available. Consequently, it is not possible to determine whether these amounts represent contributions from a large number of distinct small donors or the same donor made multiple donations below the disclosure threshold,” the ADR report observed.In 2023-24 and 2024-25, CPI received four donations from abroad. It is one of the two regional parties to have received foreign donations from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
