Birlas are Congress' main donors while Adanis and Sterlite back BJP

Whose cash are the major political parties banking on this time? A good part of election financing is obviously done with black money, but a close look at formal business funding in the recent past offers enough clues on who's bankrolling whom.

Quite clearly, businessmen have their favourites, but many others tend to back all major parties even-handedly. Else, they offer donations based on the popular votes/seats received by each major party at the last elections. The Congress' big backers are the Aditya Birla group and the Tatas, while the BJP received substantial funding from the Sterlite group of Anil Agarwal and the Gujarat-based Adanis. The Dhoots of Videocon backed both the major parties and also the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

Using the Right to Information Act extensively, DNA obtained the officially declared contribution figures of various political parties between 2003 and 2007. Since disclosures are voluntary, the figures are only indicative, and may also hide more than they reveal. Thus, there is little data on Mayawati's BSP, which did not submit any declaration to the Election Commission.

Missing from the declarations are the contributions of the Ambani brothers. While Mukesh has access to the highest levels in the Congress, Anil Ambani is close to the Samajwadi Party's Amar Singh. The Congress and the BJP hogged the lion's share of the booty during 2003-07 — almost identical amounts of Rs 52.42 crore and Rs 52.93 crore. No business house obviously wants to fall foul of the two principal nodes of Indian politics, whether they are in power or on the sidelines. But given the growth in coalitions, the smaller parties aren't doing too badly either. The Shiv Sena (Rs 4.17 crore), the Samajwadi Party (Rs 2.45 crore), the Telugu Desam (Rs 2.25 crore) and health minister Anbumani Ramadoss' PMK (Rs 2.86 crore) were key beneficiaries during this period.

The Aditya Birla group headed by Kumar Mangalam Birla emerges as the country's biggest donor, having made total donations to the tune of Rs 24.67 crore. The bulk of it went to the Congress party — Rs 21.71 crore. The BJP got all of Rs 2.96 crore. Aditya Birla's General Electoral Trust made donations only to these two major political parties. The BJP's political interests, on the other hand, were strongly supported by the Public and Political Awareness Trust based in Silvassa.

It received Rs 9.5 crore between 2003 and 2007 from this trust, which, in turn, received most of its funds from the Sterlite group of Anil Agarwal. In 2000, 51% of public sector unit Balco was sold to the Sterlite group by the then NDA government. Separately, Sterlite Industries donated Rs 1 crore to the Congress and another Rs 50 lakh to the BJP. The Venugopal Dhoot-led Videocon consumer durables group gave more than Rs 10 crore to three major parties —- the BJP, Congress and Shiv Sena. Of this, Rs 4.5 crore went to the Congress and Rs 3.5 crore to BJP.

• Corporates generous towards all parties p20

Aditya Kaul/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication