India Opposition Crowdfunds For Election In Sign Of Cash Squeeze

(Bloomberg) -- India’s main opposition party launched a public funding drive on Monday to fight the electoral juggernaut of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, a sign of the wide financial gap between the rivals.

The Indian National Congress asked supporters to donate online and plans to send party workers on a door-to-door collection drive from Dec. 28 to drum up funding before national elections in coming months. The party didn’t say how much it targets to raise from the campaign.

The party is starting the crowdfunding campaign to “take the country forward by taking help from the general public,” Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the Congress party, told reporters in New Delhi. 

The public appeal comes two weeks after the opposition’s unexpected loss in regional elections, where it won control of just one of the five states that voted. The dominance of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the regional polls puts the prime minister in a strong position to stay in power for a third term in the nationwide elections in 2024.

“The Congress is feeling quite shaken and they now want to whip up support for themselves by doing this crowdfunding,” said Arati Jerath, a New Delhi-based author and political analyst. Given the severe losses in the state elections, “clearly they were completely outmatched and outmaneuvered by the BJP,” she said.

Election funding in India is opaque and the gap between the ruling party and opposition groups is wide, Jerath said. Aside from domestic sources, the BJP has a huge network of donors outside the country, which isn’t documented, she added. 

According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, an independent election watchdog, the BJP earned 101 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) in total donations in the six years through March 2022 compared with just 15.4 billion rupees for the Congress party. The BJP’s donations were more than three times the total funds declared by all other national parties.

Most of the BJP’s income came from so-called electoral bonds, a controversial funding instrument that allows donations to flow through the banking system, but masks the identity of donors. The BJP received 57% of the 92 billion rupees in electoral bond funds in the six-year period, while the Congress got 10%. 

Trilochan Sastry, chairman of the association, said crowdfunding should be encouraged as it would make parties accountable to the public, rather than large, corporate donors.

“After the elections where thousands of crores are spent by candidates and parties, they have to repay those who funded them, either through policies or contracts,” he said. 

The Congress party’s crowdfunding plan came days after India’s Income Tax department raided the premises of its lawmaker Dheeraj Sahu and seized 3.51 billion rupees in cash there, according to India Today.

During the last election campaign five years ago, this main opposition party faced a financial crisis that made it difficult to keep some of its offices open.  

The Congress party said it wants supporters to deposit rupees in amounts of 138, 1,380 or 13,800 to commemorate the party’s 138 years in existence. Kharge invoked the memory of Congress founder Mahatma Gandhi, saying the campaign was in the spirit of a similar funding drive during Gandhi’s fight for freedom from British rule.  

“It is for the first time that Congress is taking help from common people,” Kharge said. “If we rely only on the rich and affluent then policies are made for them.”

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