How does Indian National Congress raise funds?

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indian national congress donate fundraising funds

I thought I was horrified by the Indian National Congress donations” href=”http://myneta.info/party/index.php?action=donation&year=2011&id=1″ target=”_blank”>usual list of declared donations.

There were no forum posts asking party members to pay, no blog posts urging supporters to pay. No nothing. At least not in google results.

It is no secret that most funds of political parties are unaccounted for:

unaccountable funding of <strong class='StrictlyAutoTagBold'>Indian</strong> political parties” src=”http://aamjanata.com/wp-content/uploads/political-funding.jpg” width=”895″ height=”960″ /></a></p> <p>The <strong class='StrictlyAutoTagBold'>Congress</strong> party had declared that its main source of income was through selling of coupons (Rs 1,171.61 crore), according to information received in response to an RTI filed by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Karnataka Election Watch (KEW).</p> <p>This means that the <strong class='StrictlyAutoTagBold'>Congress</strong> sold *coupons* worth Rs. 3,20,98,904 – daily. Every single day of the year. Sure, large events would probably sell more coupons, small events would sell less coupons. To put it in a different style, considering that donations above rupees twenty thousand have to be reported, assuming that each coupon was twenty thousand, it would still mean selling over one thousand six hundred coupons a day.</p> <p>And the party appears to have done it without asking anyone for money at all, or mentioning any small donations, or asking cadre to go and fund raise or anything. There isn’t a whiff of it anywhere. Never heard anyone on social media say they were going to raise funds either – now that I think of it. One incident from 2010 shows as first result for “Rahul Gandhi fund raising” similar barren expanses of no information for “Sonia Gandhi fund raising” “<strong class='StrictlyAutoTagBold'>Congress</strong> party fund raising” “donate to <strong class='StrictlyAutoTagBold'>Congress</strong> party” (without party gives results from US), and etc.</p> <p>After much expert snooping, I can confidently say that not only is most of <strong class='StrictlyAutoTagBold'>Congress</strong> funding opaque in terms of not offering accounts, if coupons have been sold to masses, there is ZERO evidence of it. No talks of “vouchers are with Sushil” or “donations were good today” even. Nothing. And I have done a hell of a lot of snooping when I confidently say I fail to find out even a whiff.</p> <p>I had thought I was aghast at <a title=BJP solicits foreign funding” href=”http://aamjanata.com/bjp-solicits-foreign-funding/” target=”_blank”>BJP’s open courting of foreign funds. I have to admit I am even more creeped out at massive collections of public funds without a trace in public view.

And when a new book “Unknown Facets of Rajiv Gandhi, Jyoti Basu and Indrajit Gupta” written by former CBI director Dr A P Mukherjee says (according to Enhanced by Zemanta

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