Money In. Money Stuck. Money Lost.
India Inc.’s three ledgers of power: ₹3,826 crore disbursed through electoral trusts, more than ₹25 lakh crore in disputed income-tax demands, and an estimated ₹10 lakh crore of insolvency claims not recovered.
By
Murthy ASR | Biz Masala
| 14 October 2026
Title: Ledger graphic
with three columns: Money In, 3,826 crore rupees via electoral trusts; Money
Stuck, over 25 lakh crore rupees in tax disputes; Money Lost, about 10 lakh
crore rupees unrecovered in insolvency - Description: Ledger graphic with three
columns: Money In, 3,826 crore rupees via electoral trusts; Money Stuck, over
25 lakh crore rupees in tax disputes; Money Lost, about 10 lakh crore rupees
unrecovered in insolvency
Open the books on how corporate India and
the Indian state deal with each other, and three ledgers fill up. One records
money going in: from companies to the parties that make the rules. One records
money stuck: tax the Government says it is owed and companies say they are not,
parked in appeals for years. The third records money lost: loans that lenders
never got back from companies that failed.
Each ledger is kept by a different
institution, the Election Commission, the Income Tax Department and the
insolvency regulator, and each is usually reported on its own. Read together,
they raise a plain question about business India: who holds the power, who
waits, and who pays?
This story does not allege wrongdoing.
Every figure comes from a government filing, an official reply in Parliament or
a regulator's data. Where the numbers have a fair counterpoint, it sits right
beside them.
LEDGER ONE: MONEY IN
Electoral bonds are dead. The money isn't.
In February 2024 the Supreme Court struck
down electoral bonds, the anonymous donation instrument, holding it
unconstitutional because it violated voters' right to information. Anyone who
expected corporate money to retreat from politics would have been disappointed
by what followed.
In 2024-25, the first full year after the
ruling, declared donations to national parties jumped 161%, or ₹4,104 crore,
over the year before. Corporate donors accounted for ₹6,128.79 crore of it,
92.18% of the total, according to ADR's analysis of Election Commission
filings. The BJP declared ₹6,074 crore, more than ten times the combined total
of every other national party. The Congress declared ₹517 crore, up 84% from
₹281 crore.
|
EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION |
The money found a new road. Electoral
trusts, which pool donations and pass them on to parties, disbursed ₹3,826
crore in 2024-25, up from ₹1,218 crore a year earlier, more than triple. The
BJP received ₹3,157.65 crore of it, or 82.52%. Prudent Electoral Trust alone
gave ₹2,668 crore to 15 parties. Progressive Electoral Trust, reported to be
backed by the Tata Group, gave ₹915 crore to 10.
Title: Flow diagram
of electoral trust money in 2024-25: three trust groups on the left, BJP,
Congress and other parties on the right, with band widths proportional to rupee
amounts - Description: Flow diagram of electoral trust money in 2024-25: three
trust groups on the left, BJP, Congress and other parties on the right, with
band widths proportional to rupee amounts
*Remainder derived from total less BJP allocation.
The trail is only partly visible. Of 20
registered trusts, 15 filed reports and only 10 declared receiving any
donations. The reports of five trusts were still missing from the Election
Commission's website three months after the deadline. Donor addresses were not
disclosed for ₹1,065 crore of contributions, most of it to Prudent. The ten
biggest donors gave about half of all the money trusts received, and ADR notes
that trust names often do not reveal which companies stand behind them.
Fair play matters here. Trusts are legal
and report to the Election Commission. The money is not one-way: the Congress
received about ₹313 crore through trusts, around 60% of its ₹517 crore, and the
Trinamool Congress received ₹153.5 crore of its ₹184.5 crore the same way.
Nothing in these filings shows that any donation bought any outcome. The
question the numbers raise is about concentration and visibility, not
wrongdoing.
Title: Two stacked
bars showing the division of trust money and of all declared national-party
donations between the BJP, the Congress and others - Description: Two stacked
bars showing the division of trust money and of all declared national-party
donations between the BJP, the Congress and others
The bonds were struck down for secrecy. The
trusts are legal. How much light do they let in?
LEDGER TWO: MONEY STUCK
The ₹25 lakh crore waiting room
Move from the party office to the tax
office. At the end of 2024-25, the Government told Parliament, more than ₹25
lakh crore was locked up in income tax disputes. The money sits across four
tiers of appeal. At the first stage, before the Commissioner (Appeals), 5.39
lakh appeals were pending with ₹16.75 lakh crore in dispute. The Income Tax
Appellate Tribunal held 22,960 appeals worth ₹3.64 lakh crore. High Courts had
34,486 cases worth ₹5.65 lakh crore, and the Supreme Court 6,338 cases worth
₹25,403 crore.
|
EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION |
Title: Bar chart of
disputed income tax at four appeal stages: first appeal 16.75 lakh crore,
tribunal 3.64, High Courts 5.65, Supreme Court 25,403 crore rupees -
Description: Bar chart of disputed income tax at four appeal stages: first
appeal 16.75 lakh crore, tribunal 3.64, High Courts 5.65, Supreme Court 25,403
crore rupees
The first rung is the bottleneck. Pending
appeals there rose from 4.49 lakh in 2020-21 to a peak of 5.48 lakh in 2023-24
and stood at 5.40 lakh a year later, even as the disputed amount fell from
₹24.52 lakh crore to ₹16.75 lakh crore. A body of tax professionals, the AIFTP,
has told the Finance Minister that some appeals have waited more than five
years. For scale, total outstanding income tax demand stood at ₹48.18 lakh
crore on 1 April 2025, across 22.9 million demand entries.
Who waits? Both sides. For companies,
disputed tax is cash that cannot fund working capital or a new plant. For the
exchequer it is revenue not yet realised. A Parliamentary panel said in March
2026 that the tax department's success rate in litigation has fallen over three
years, and warned that pursuing legally unsustainable appeals drains the
exchequer and clogs the courts. It asked for an Expert Litigation Committee to
vet cases before they go up.
The Government is acting. Since September
2024 it has raised the monetary limits for department appeals to ₹60 lakh at
the tribunal, ₹2 crore in High Courts and ₹5 crore in the Supreme Court, which
the Finance Minister told the Lok Sabha has cut disputed demand by about
₹16,690 crore. In 2024-25 the first-appeal forum disposed of 1,72,361 cases
worth ₹6.3 lakh crore, and the target for 2025-26 is two lakh cases worth ₹10
lakh crore. Disputes are not one-sided either: tax department data reported by
Angel One show ₹1.95 lakh crore of the demands decided were upheld in full and
another ₹2.25 lakh crore in part.
Every rupee in that queue is a rupee
someone believes is theirs: the taxpayer or the exchequer.
LEDGER THREE: MONEY LOST
Lend ₹100, get back ₹30
The third ledger records what happens when
a company cannot repay. As of 30 June 2026, 9,166 companies had been admitted
to insolvency under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. About 1,500 of them,
16.2%, ended in a successful resolution. More than 3,000 ended in liquidation.
Across the cases the creditors recovered 30.5% of admitted claims on average, a
haircut of 69.5%.
|
EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION |
|
EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION |
That is roughly ₹4.35 lakh crore recovered.
By simple arithmetic, it implies about ₹10 lakh crore of admitted claims that
lenders did not get back. Nearly half of the resolution plans approved up to
March 2025 gave creditors less than 20% of their admitted claims, according to
an analysis of IBBI data.
Time is the second casualty. The Code sets
an outer limit of 330 days. The average resolution took 757 days in June 2026,
up from 744 in March 2026 and 713 in March 2025. About 76% of ongoing cases had
crossed 270 days, and nearly 70% of ongoing liquidations had been pending for
more than two years.
Title: Bar chart: the
legal limit for insolvency resolution is 330 days; the average was 713 days in
March 2025, 744 in March 2026 and 757 in June 2026 - Description: Bar chart:
the legal limit for insolvency resolution is 330 days; the average was 713 days
in March 2025, 744 in March 2026 and 757 in June 2026
Fair play again. Admitted claims include
years of accumulated interest, so the haircut looks steeper on paper than in
value terms. Resolution still recovers about 166% of what liquidation would
have fetched, and straight liquidation returns only about 4% of claims. The
losses fall first on lenders, mostly banks, and delay erodes what is left to
recover.
Parliament has responded. The IBC
(Amendment) Act, 2026, which received assent on 6 April 2026 and is being
notified in stages, requires tribunals to admit applications within 14 days of
default. It creates an out-of-court, creditor-initiated process of 150 days
plus one 45-day extension, which needs the approval of at least 51% of
financial creditors. It also sets a 180-day target for liquidation, extendable
by up to 90 days, and adds a framework for group insolvency.
READ TOGETHER
Three ledgers, one question
Put the ledgers side by side and the
pattern is not about any one party, ministry or company. Political money moves
through channels that are legal but only partly visible. Tax money waits in a
queue that both the taxpayer and the exchequer would like shorter. Lenders'
money waits in another queue and comes back thinner the longer a case drags on.
Each ledger is open to anyone who reads the
filings. In two of them, reform is already under way; in the third, the gaps
flagged in ADR's latest analysis are for the Election Commission and Parliament
to address. The scorecard below sets each headline figure against its fair
counterpoint and what to watch next.
|
Ledger |
The headline numbers |
Fair-play context |
What to watch |
|
MONEY IN |
₹3,826 crore
routed to parties through electoral trusts in FY2024-25; 82.5% went to the
BJP. Corporate donors gave ₹6,128.79 crore, or 92.18%, of declared
national-party funds. |
Trusts are legal
and file reports with the Election Commission. The Congress received about
₹313 crore through trusts, roughly 60% of its ₹517 crore. Nothing here links
any donation to any outcome. |
Whether the five
missing trust reports appear on the Election Commission site, and what
FY2025-26 filings show. |
|
MONEY STUCK |
More than ₹25
lakh crore in income tax disputes; 5.39 lakh appeals at the first stage
alone, worth ₹16.75 lakh crore. |
Both sides wait:
taxpayers' cash and the exchequer's revenue. Higher appeal thresholds since
September 2024 cut disputed demand by about ₹16,690 crore. |
Whether the
2025-26 target to dispose of ₹10 lakh crore at the first stage is met. |
|
MONEY LOST |
Creditors
recover 30.5% of admitted claims; average resolution takes 757 days against a
330-day limit; about ₹10 lakh crore of claims unrecovered. |
Claims include
accrued interest; resolution recovers about 166% of liquidation value. |
Whether the 757
days starts to fall as the IBC Amendment Act, 2026 is notified in stages. |
Three numbers will show whether the ledgers
are improving: how much of the 2025-26 trust money can be traced to its donors
when the new filings appear, whether the ₹16.75 lakh crore first-appeal pile
moves toward the ₹10 lakh crore disposal target, and whether 757 days begins to
fall.
Power in business India leaves a paper
trail. The books are open. The questions are now yours.
How to read the numbers
·
Political funding: declared
donations above ₹20,000, as analysed by ADR from Election Commission filings
(FY2024-25). Trust totals come from the reports trusts file. The Congress's
₹313 crore through trusts is from PTI's reading of the party's filing; the
'others' figures are derived.
·
Tax disputes: the Government's
reply in the Rajya Sabha, position at the end of 2024-25. The Government
describes the total as over ₹25 lakh crore. Industry body FICCI has cited a
higher first-appeal figure (₹18.16 trillion); this story uses the Government's.
·
Insolvency: IBBI data,
cumulative since 2016, as of 30 June 2026. The ₹10 lakh crore is arithmetic:
₹4.35 lakh crore recovered, divided by 30.5%, less the recovery.
·
Periods differ across the three
ledgers because each institution publishes on its own schedule. The ledger
graphic combines them for illustration.
Sources: ADR report on
donations to national parties FY2024-25 (via PTI, 26 March 2026); ADR analysis
of electoral trust contribution reports FY2024-25 (via PTI, 13 February 2026);
Election Commission contribution reports as reported by PTI (3 December 2025)
and Scroll; Rajya Sabha reply by the Minister of State for Finance on income
tax disputes, as reported by Taxscan and A2Z Taxcorp; Lok Sabha reply by the
Finance Minister on appeal thresholds (2026); Parliamentary panel report on
income tax litigation (via PTI, 15 March 2026); Angel One on CBDT 2025-26
targets; AIFTP representation to the Finance Minister; IBBI data as of 30 June
2026 (via Deccan Chronicle) and Outlook Business analysis of IBBI data; IBC
(Amendment) Act, 2026 summaries (TaxGuru, Vision IAS, Conventus Law).
BIZ MASALA
Business. Markets. People. Insight.
By Murthy ASR
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