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Rajiv Gandhi’s “back room boys” of the mid-eighties pioneered the commercialisation of Indian elections. Arun Nehru was the first to draft a private advertising agency, Rediffusion, to design the Congress party’s 1984 poll campaign; posters, pamphlets, et al. In 2012-13, with ample funding and corporate support, Narendra Modi launched India’s first full-blown ‘Americanised’ election campaign. It was all about Modi-centred personalised assurances, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), his party, was pushed into the background.

What unfolded in 2014 was a presidential-style mobilisation with covered enclosures, fans and ACs replacing the old maidan rallies. Everything in that campaign was promised, done or assailed in the name of the top boss.

In the United States, presidential campaigns begin with mopping up huge corporate funds. For Modi, funds came through his own corporate sponsors. Thus, by the time the Bharatiya Janata Party (PM) formally decided to make him prime minister-nominee, a high-pitch cult had built up and fund collections had reached critical mass. After Modi took over as prime minister, his finance minister Arun Jaitley’s first priority was to craft the electoral bonds scheme that enabled record donations from anonymous donors.

Expectedly, the BJP cornered a bulk of the bond money. A detailed breakup showed that the ruling party got Rs 5,271.97 crore and the Congress just Rs 952.39 crore. The BJP’s war chest grew even bigger after the Supreme Court annulled the electoral bonds scheme. In 2024-25, the party received a massive Rs 3,112.5 crore – nearly 82% – of the Rs 3,811.34 crore distributed by nine electoral trusts.

It received Rs 2,180.71 crore from the Prudent Electoral Trust out of Rs 2,668.49 crore and Rs 757.62 crore from Progressive Electoral Trust out of Rs 915 crore. The Congress received only Rs 298.76 crore or 7.83% of the total.

A year after the electoral bond scheme was scrapped, BJP’s corpus grew by over 50% to Rs 6,088 crore. Among the donors were corporate groups and clans such as the Tatas, Mahindras, O.P. Jindal, L&T and Megha Industries. On the other hand, donations to the Congress party almost halved to Rs 522 crore. BJP’s corpus grew to almost 12 times the size of the Congress’s kitty.

The donations received by a dozen opposition parties, including the Congress, added up to Rs 1,343 crores in 2024-25.

Among the contributors to the BJP were Prudent Electoral Trust,........

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