Political Money and Government Advertising

Party income and spending, electoral bonds and trusts, and Union and state government advertising and promotion.

The 10 figures in this chapter are reproduced from the report of Atlas research module M3, with the passage of the study that explains each. They keep the study’s own labels and colours: RW denotes the Hindutva-aligned bloc and LW the coalition that contests it (see A Note on Terms).

49.11. Party income, FY2004-05 to FY2024-25 (D19; sources P, AF)

Data.

49.22. Electoral bonds: the donor → party matrix (D19; source P)

Checks.

49.33. Electoral trusts and pre-2013 trusts (D19; sources P, AF)

Allegations (ALLEGED/INFERRED, not documented).

49.44. Election and candidate spending; offline mass communication (D19, D18; sources P, Y)

Coverage. Trust receipts are 91% donor-attributed. The unattributed ₹752.65 cr is AB General FY25 plus General ET FY15.

49.55. Digital political ads and influence-for-hire (D19, D21; sources P, W)

Boundary with M4. M3 owns the ₹ flows for party, surrogate-page and consultancy-run ads, and for government digital ads and influencer schemes. M4 records platform-level copies of these rows flagged overlap-M3. M3 file and row IDs: F-M3-DA- and F-M3-IS-.

49.67. State government advertising: DIPR spend, out-of-state ads and election spikes (D18; source Q)

Every source is a lower bound with a different scope, because departments, boards and off-budget bodies also advertise. So each primary flow row takes the largest documented total at the highest source rank, and every alternative is kept in M3_T14_govt_ads_all_sources.csv. Multi-year totals with no annual split are allocated evenly (F-M3-RA-*, EST). Each FY takes the bloc of that FY's ruling party (scripts/ruling_parties.csv, 31 jurisdictions FY05–FY27, 2026 changes verified in the press).

Exceptions where spending had already peaked: Union FY19 0.91×; AP (TDP) FY19 0.98×; Jharkhand (JMM) FY25 0.98×; Delhi (AAP) FY25 0.62×.

Five out-of-state campaigns have dates but no amounts: Karnataka (INC) in Telangana, Nov 2023, stopped by the ECI; Telangana in Maharashtra (Nov 2024) and in Kerala papers (2026); Delhi (AAP) in other states (CAG noted campaigns "outside NCT"); BRS national papers before the party's national launch.

49.79. Discretionary funds (D27, D19; source AB)

Other central items.

49.810. T66 verification against roll-call and voting records

Limits. Indian divisions publish totals; member-wise lists exist only for recorded divisions, and no official party-wise tally exists. Positions come from ≥2 independent press or official sources per party-vote (136 records, notes/t66_votes.csv), graded C.