Political parties show dip in dotions above Rs 20,000

New Delhi, Dec 21: Seven tiol parties in India received a total of Rs 102.2 crore as dotions in fiscal 2015-16, compared to Rs 528.67 crore in the previous year, showing a dip of about 84 per cent, the information submitted to the Election Commission by the parties showed. Amid talks of transparency in dotions to political parties, a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said the tiol parties have declared an amount of Rs 102.2 crore from 1,744 dotions of or above Rs 20,000 in 2015-16. Of this, Rs 1.45 crore was in cash, which is merely 1.42 per cent of the total amount. According to rules, dotions below Rs 20,000 are not required to be reported to the Election Commission, but they have to be mentioned in the Income Tax Returns filed by the parties. The political parties, however, need not pay any Income Tax. The seven tiol parties are the Bharatiya Jata Party (BJP), Congress, Trimool Congress (TMC), Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Communist Party of India (CPI), tiolist Congress Party (NCP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Of these, the BSP said they have not received any dotions which were more than Rs 20,000. According the report, the NCP showed the maximum decrease of 98 per cent in dotions, declaring Rs 71 lakh under the head in this fincial year, compared to Rs 38.82 crore in 2014-15.  (IANS)