Press Release: BJP spent Rs 1493.91 cr or 44.56% and INC spent Rs 620.14 cr or 18.50% of the total expenditure incurred by 32 National and Regional political parties during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections

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Jun 20, 2025, 3:14:21 AMJun 20

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Press Release

20th June, 2025

Analysis of Funds Collected and Expenditure Incurred by Political Parties during General Election to Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh,

Odisha and Sikkim, 2024

To access the reports on the website, please go to: https://adrindia.org/content/Analysis-of-Funds-Collected-and-Expenditure-Incurred-by-Political-Parties-during-Lok-Sabha-and-Simultaneous-Assembly-Elections-2024

Executive Summary

Political parties are required to submit a statement of election expenditure to the Election Commission within 90 days of completion of General Elections and 75 days of completion of State Assembly elections.
The expenditure statement contains details of the total amount received as funds in the form of cash, cheques and demand drafts and the total amount spent under various heads.
The expenditure statement contains information on the amount spent on the following heads at the Central Headquarters and State Unit level by the party:
o   Publicity
o   Travel expenses
o   Other expenses
o   Expenditure towards candidates
o   Expenditure incurred on publishing criminal antecedents of the candidate (s)
o   Expenses on virtual campaign through social media platforms/Apps/Other means by party central & state units

Political parties submit these statements providing information of funds collected and spent between announcement and completion of elections. This period could be between 3 weeks to 3 months based on the notification issued by the Election Commission.
The focus of this report is the expenditure of National and Regional parties during Lok Sabha 2024 elections (and the Assembly elections to four states – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha & Sikkim held simultaneously) and analyses the funds received and expenditure incurred by Parties, during the election period of 82 days (16 March 2024 to 6 June 2024).
5 National Parties and 27 Regional Parties have been considered for analysis in this report.
Election expenditure statements of 21 National and Regional political parties including NPEP, SHS(UBT), SHS, CPI, NCP, JMM, BPF, JKNC and AD (Soneylal) etc. are unavailable on the website of ECI. The expenditure statements of RJD, LJP (RV), AJSU KC(M) are not available for the Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Odisha Assembly elections 2024.

Details provided in the Election Expenditure Statement

4^th September, 2024 was the last date of filing of election expenditure statements for National and Regional parties for the Lok Sabha elections, which was 90 days from 6^th June’24, the date of completion of the elections.
Based on the information available on the website of Election Commission of India, the expenditure statements of 14 National and Regional political parties were available in the public domain after a delay ranging between one day to 232 days.
Among National Parties, AAP’s expenditure statement was available after a maximum delay of 168 days followed by BJP (Lok Sabha-139 days, Andhra Pradesh & Odisha- 142 days, Arunachal Pradesh - 154 days and Sikkim - 147 days) and CPI(M) - 96 days.
Only INC has submitted a combined expenditure statement for the Lok Sabha and four Assembly elections. In contrast, BJP, CPI(M), AAP, and BSP have filed separate statements for the Lok Sabha and assembly elections. Additionally, RJD, LJP(RV), AJSU Party, and KC(M) have submitted expenditure details only for the Lok Sabha elections, while their statements for the assembly elections they contested are yet to be uploaded on the Election Commission’s website.

Funds collected and Expenditure incurred by political parties

Total funds collected by 5 National and 27 Regional political parties (henceforth political parties) during General Elections 2024 amounted to a total of Rs 7445.566 cr.
Of the total funds collected, National parties collected Rs 6930.246 cr (93.08%) while Regional parties received Rs 515.32 cr (6.92%).
The 32 National and Regional parties together spent Rs 3352.81 cr during the Lok Sabha and assembly elections 2024, of which an expenditure of Rs 2204.318 cr (65.75%) was incurred by the 5 National Parties.
JKPDP and KC(M) are the only two parties that incurred no expenditure despite contesting elections.

Expenditure incurred by political parties under various heads

Political parties declare their expenditure under the heads of Publicity, Travel Expenses, Other/Miscellaneous expenses, Lumpsum amounts paid to their contesting candidates, Expenditure incurred on publishing criminal antecedents of the candidate(s) and Expenses on virtual campaign through social media platforms/Apps/Other means by party central & state units.
32 Political parties whose expenditure details were analysed for the 2024 General Elections and 4 Assembly Elections, spent the highest, Rs 2008.295 cr on Publicity, followed by Rs 795.414 cr on Travel expenses, Rs 402.177 cr on Lumpsum amounts paid to candidates, Rs 400.0515 cr on Other/Miscellaneous expenses, Rs 132.0853 cr on Expenses on virtual campaign through social media platforms/apps/other means by Party Central & state units and Rs 28.253 cr on Expenditure incurred on publishing criminal antecedents of the candidate (s).
Expenditure on Publicity is 53.32% of the overall expenditure declared under various heads while expenses incurred towards candidates constituted 10.68% of the total expenditure.
Political parties spent Rs 28.253 cr (0.75%) on publishing criminal antecedents of their contesting candidates.
Political parties also spent Rs 132.0853 cr (3.51%) on Expenses on virtual campaigns through social media platforms/Apps/Other means by Party Central & state unit.

Expenditure on Publicity by political parties

Political Parties are required to segregate their publicity expenses under three heads: Media Advertisement, Publicity Materials and Public Meetings.
During the General Elections & 4 state assembly elections 2024, the 32 political parties analysed spent the maximum on Media Advertisement (Rs 1464.5144 cr or 72.923%) followed by expenditure on Publicity Materials (Rs 409.372 cr or 20.384%) and Public Meetings (Rs 134.4086 cr or 6.693%).
Of the total expenditure of the 32 political parties on publicity, Rs 1511.3004 cr or 75.25% was spent by the National parties and Rs 496.9946 cr or 24.75% was spent by the Regional parties.

Expenditure on Travel by political parties

The ‘Travel’ head is segregated into travel expenses incurred specifically on star campaigners and that of the party leaders.
Political parties spent a total of Rs 795.414 cr on ‘Travel’. Of this, National parties spent Rs 633.91 cr (79.70%) and Regional Parties incurred Rs 161.504 cr (20.30%).
National and Regional political parties collectively spent 96.22% of their total travel expenses or Rs 765.366 cr on their star campaigners and the remaining 3.78% or Rs 30.048 cr on the travel of their party leaders.

Observations of ADR

The election expenditure statements of 21 National and Regional parties including NPEP, SHS(UBT), SHS, CPI, NCP, JMM, BPF, JKNC and AD(Soneylal) etc. for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are unavailable on the website of ECI at the time of preparation of this report. The expenditure statements of RJD, LJP(RV), AJSU KC(M) are not available for the concerned 2024 assembly elections contested in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Odisha.
A total of 690 Unrecognised Political Parties contested in the General Elections last year, while 1 in Arunachal Pradesh, 74 in Andhra Pradesh, 35 in Odisha, and 2 in Sikkim contested in the assembly elections held simultaneously, whose expenditure statements have not been analysed as part of this report.
12 Regional parties namely, LJSP, RLSP, JCC(J), GFP, MGP, MNS, HSPDP, PDF, ZNP, AINRC, IPFT and TMP did not contest the elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies of Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim 2024.
It is important to note that the election expenditure details of the parties reveal that most of them have shown the same amount of funds received and expenses incurred in the states where both Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections were held simultaneously. Therefore, in this report, that amount has been added only once instead of twice, to ensure the data remains accurate and clear.
It must be noted that few political parties submitted a combined account of their expenses for the 2024 Parliamentary elections and the four State Assembly elections that took place alongside. This is not as per the accepted practice of submission of expenditure statements for the two types of elections in accordance with their respective deadlines of 75 days (Assembly elections) and 90 days (Lok Sabha elections). Additionally, the availability of data in such format makes it impossible to do a comparative analysis of the election expenditure over the years, which is vital from the point of view of uniformity, transparency and independent research.
The EC issued instructions that candidates and political parties shall include all expenditure on campaigning inclusive of expenditure on advertisements on social media, both for maintaining a correct account of expenditure and for submitting the statement of expenditure. However, several parties fail to account social media expenses independent of expenses under other heads part of electronic media.

Recommendations of ADR

In 2020, nine working groups (comprising Chief Electoral Officers of states and other ECI officials) presented their draft recommendations to the ECI, among which it was suggested that there needs to be a cap on the expenditure to be incurred for an election by political parties. In 2015, ECI also recommended to the Ministry of Law a proposal to cap maximum expenditure of political parties to a multiple of half of maximum prescribed limit for individual candidates with the number of candidates fielded. ADR recommends that steps must be taken in this regard and the modalities must be worked out in a time bound manner.
It must be made mandatory for all political parties to submit their statements of expenditure in the format given by the ECI, within the prescribed time limit. Political parties not submitting on time or in the prescribed format should be heavily penalized.
The details of all donors who contribute to National and Regional parties exclusively for their election campaigns must be declared in the public domain irrespective of the amount donated.
A format similar to the donations report along with the date of donations, submitted to the ECI on an annual basis, has to be prescribed for the expenditure statement so as to bring in more transparency in the finances of the political parties especially during elections when it is said that black money plays a major role.
Where possible, expenditure must be limited to transactions via cheque/DD/RTGS so as to reduce use of black money in elections, as per the transparency guidelines issued by the ECI.
Similar to the shadow observers of the ECI for monitoring expenditure of candidates, there must also be observers for monitoring the expenditure of political parties.