SP, DMK and TRS accounted for 46% of all regional parties' incomes: ADR

By A Representative
An analysis of the officially declared income of 37 regional parties in the financial year (FY) 2017-18 shows that it was Rs 237.27 crore. Of this, Samajwadi Party (SP) reported having the highest income of Rs 47.19 crore, which forms 19.89% of the total income of all 37 regional parties, closely followed by DMK Rs 35.75 crore or 15.07% and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) whose income was Rs 27.27 crore or 11.49%.
Overall, in FY 2017-18, the total income of top regional parties (SP, DMK, TRS) alone amounted to Rs 110.21 crore, which comprised 46.45% of the total income of 37 regional parties, collectively.
The total expenditure of all the 37 regional parties in FY 2017-18, was Rs 170.45 crore, says the analysis carried out by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) based on audit reports these parties submitted to the Election Commission of India (ECI). Top three regional parties that incurred highest expenditure were SP which spent Rs 34.54 crore, followed by DMK Rs 27.47 crore and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) Rs 16.73 crore.
The analysis further shows that DMK, TRS and YSR-Congress saw the maximum increase in income of Rs 31.97 crore, Rs 23.48 crore and Rs 13.30 crore, respectively, in their income from FY 2016-17 to 2017-18. It adds, during FY 2017-18 out of the 37 regional parties, only JDS declared receiving an income of Rs 6.03 crore from contributions through electoral bonds.
In all, there are 48 regional parties which were considered for analysis. Of these, 20 had submitted their audit reports on time, while 17 delayed their submission by several days, ranging from 1 day to 110 days. Audit reports of 11 regional parties for FY 2017-18 are unavailable on the website of the ECI.

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