Congress seeks a JPC after claiming Rs 10,000 crore moved through 3,260 unrecognised parties

The Congress on 9 September asked for a Joint Parliamentary Committee on what it called a donation route through 3,260 registered unrecognised political parties. Shaktisinh Gohil, briefing at the party office in New Delhi, put the tax loss above Rs 10,000 crore. Jairam Ramesh later asked who the Chanakya behind the parties was, and said they operate under BJP patronage.

Those are partisan charges. The mechanism Gohil described is specific enough to check. Sections 80GGB and 80GGC of the Income Tax Act let companies and individuals deduct donations to registered political parties. Gohil said donors paid into RUPPs, claimed the deduction, and took most of the money back in cash after a commission of 2 to 15 percent. For a taxpayer with income above Rs 5 crore, he said, the effective rate with surcharge and cess can exceed 42 percent, which makes the round trip attractive on paper.

What a RUPP is, and why the number is large

A registered unrecognised political party is on the Election Commission's books but has no state or national recognition. India has thousands of them. Many exist only at filing time. The Association for Democratic Reforms flagged abuse of this layer in a report in August 2025. Congress says that report was the alert and that a year later no one has faced a 200 percent penalty or a criminal case.

Gohil claimed some Income Tax officers in Jharkhand recommended prosecution and were stopped. He asked for public lists of donors to the 3,260 parties and of people linked to those parties who later joined the BJP. He also said the Election Commission and the tax department have not used the tools they already have to strike names off the register or disallow the deductions.

The government had not issued a point-by-point reply by Thursday morning. In past cycles the official line on RUPPs has been that the Commission already deletes inactive parties and that tax abuse is an enforcement matter, not a political design. That line will have to deal with the arithmetic Congress put on the table: 3,260 entities and a four-figure crore estimate.

Why a JPC is the ask

A Joint Parliamentary Committee can summon the Commission, the Central Board of Direct Taxes and party office-bearers and force documents into a report that the House has to debate. It is also a political instrument. Congress wants the frame to be a scam with a mastermind. The BJP will treat it as an opposition headline built on an old ADR paper.

The useful middle is narrower. Political donations are deductible by statute. That statute assumes the recipient is a real party. If thousands of RUPPs collect money and return it, the failure is in verification before the deduction is allowed, not only in speeches after the fact. The Central Board can match donation certificates against party accounts. The Commission can ask every RUPP for a bank statement and a list of office-bearers who are not also donors.

None of that requires a new law. It requires the two agencies Gohil named to publish how many of the 3,260 parties filed audited accounts last year and how many deductions tied to them were accepted. Until those tables exist, the Rs 10,000 crore figure is an allegation with a method attached. The method is testable. The JPC demand is how Congress wants the test conducted in public.

Readers should hold the patronage claim separately from the tax claim. One is about who protects the parties. The other is about whether the deduction sections are being used as a cash-back window. Only the second can be counted from returns.