New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party appears to have illegally collected public donations a few years ago in the name of government initiatives like Swachh Bharat, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Kisan Seva. The NaMo app and narendramodi.in portal still show options of contributing to the government schemes in their donation pages.

RTI responses to queries filed by a Chennai-based senior journalist B.R. Aravindakshan, who is the news editor of the channel Sathiyam TV, showed that the BJP did not have any special permission or any authorisation from central ministries or the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to collect donations for the Union government’s welfare schemes. 

The BJP ran a fundraising campaign between December 2021 and February 2022 through private platforms like narendramodi.in and the NaMo app, in which it asked contributors to donate funds for Swachh Bharat, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Kisan Seva – all government schemes. Both the website and the app asked donors to choose between one of these three government schemes and list “party fund” as “cause for donation” while contributing to the BJP. 

However, ministries responsible for implementing these schemes have clearly said now in their RTI responses that none of these platforms, or for that matter any other, had been promoted or authorised or given special permission to raise funds for the schemes. 

On December 25, 2021, BJP president J.P. Nadda had announced a “micro-donation” campaign to strengthen the party on former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birth anniversary. He had said that the drive will end on February 11, 2022, the death anniversary of Hindutva icon Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.

Although Nadda had said that the donations will be collected to strengthen the party and its “mass movement”, the donors found that they were being asked to contribute towards government schemes, if they did not want to contribute towards building BJP’s “party fund”.

On the same day in 2021, prime minister Narendra Modi also endorsed the campaign from his verified X (then Twitter) handle, and urged people to donate towards the fund. “Your support will enthuse millions of Karyakartas (party workers) who are selflessly devoted to the cause of nation building,” Modi said. Like Nadda, the prime minister, too, shared a screenshot of his personal contribution of Rs 1,000 towards the fund, leading many of the BJP’s supporters to do the same.

As noted before, although the campaign ended in February 2022, both the platforms still throw up the option of contributing to the government schemes in their donation pages. 

Sathiyam TV’s news editor Aravindakshan also contributed Rs 100 to each of these government schemes through these platforms and received online receipts in his email from the central office of the BJP. 

“As the names of Union Government schemes were displayed in the payment links (of the website) and NaMo App donation module, I reasonably believed that donations were for those schemes, which induced me and other citizens to donate,” Aravindakshan said. 

Subsequently, through January and February 2022, Aravindakshan sent multiple RTI queries to the Union ministries in charge of the three government schemes for which the BJP collected donations. He received responses that ascertained that the BJP did not have any authorisation or special permission from them to collect funds for these entirely government-funded welfare schemes. Aravindashan asked the ministries whether any NGO or individual were allowed to raise funds for these schemes and whether any special permission were given to the NaMo app and narendramodi.in to collect funds for them. 

The Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), responding to Aravindakshan’s RTI query to the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti's Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin), clearly said, "There is no provision in SBM(G) Phase-II guidelines regarding raising of funds by NGO or individual for Swachh Bharat projects.”

The Union Ministry of Women and Child Development’s response to the RTI query was similar. The CPIO Rachana Bolimera categorically stated, “There is no provision to give special permission to raise funds through the NaMo App for the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme.”

Aravindakshan, however, struggled to get a response from the department of agriculture, cooperation and farmers welfare. The department first denied any information on the query, with the CPIO Chandan Kumar saying, “The matter does not pertain to the Digital Agriculture Division.” 

When Aravindakshan appealed against the response at the first appellate authority, the director of the Digital Agriculture Division Vijay Raj Mohan disposed of the appeal in April, 2022 repeating that the subject matter did not pertain to the department but added that “no such apps are promoted by the Department; (b) the Government of India does not raise funds for any welfare apps relating to dissemination of information to farmers/farming community”. Mohan also advised Aravindakshan to approach provincial authorities as agriculture was a state subject. 

Simultaneously, Aravindakshan also filed RTI queries with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), raising 16 detailed questions about the legitimacy of NaMo app and narendramodi.in as platforms to collect funds for the government. However, his application was transferred to the PMO, which responded by saying that “information sought is not part of the record held by this office". A subsequent RTI application to MeitY elicited the same response, and was transferred to the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and MyGov Unit, Digital India Corporation. Both NeGD and MyGov, too, responded by saying that information sought by the applicant was not a part of their office records. 

After such unsuccessful attempts, Aravindaskhan finally managed to get a concrete response from the PMO to his RTI application on October 10, 2023. In this RTI application, he specifically asked for three sets of information: one, whether any separate official app has been created in the name of the Prime Minister of India; two, who maintains the official Twitter/X page of the Prime Minister's Office and prepares posts; and three, whether there is any official connection between the NaMo App and the PMO.

The PMO, through the CPIO Parvesh Kumar, disposed of the RTI on November 16, 2023 but responded that “there is no official app in the name of the Prime Minister of India”. He also said, “...[T]here is no particular official managing social media accounts of PMO; inputs are provided by officers and periodically updated.”

As far as the question regarding a possible connection between NaMo app and the PMO, the RTI response said that “information sought does not form part of records held by this office". Aravindakshan’s subsequent appeals didn’t elicit any response from the appellate authorities who held that sufficient information that is part of the records had already been provided by the PMO. 

Three key ministries thus confirmed that the "micro-donation" campaign carried out by the BJP had not been authorised by the Union government or any other government body. 

Aravindakshan, on December 8, 2025, wrote to the Police Commissioner of Chennai and the Regional Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, requesting for a probe in the matter. Earlier, he had also written to the prime minister, the secretaries of all the four concerned ministries, and the secretary of the Union home ministry to complain about what appeared to have been an unauthorised donation drive by the BJP. 

Aravindakshan said in the letters, “Citizens, including the complainant, were induced to donate through the NaMo App/ www.narendramodi.in on the express appeal of the Hon'ble Prime Minister and the National President of the BJP, with the distinct impression that contributions were being made both to the BJP and to Union Government schemes like Swachh Bharat, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Kisan Seva. In reality, receipts show that the funds were received by the Central Office of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a registered political party, while Union Government Ministries uniformly deny any scheme or authority permitting such fund-raising in the names of these government schemes.”

He alleged that the donation drive kept the contributors in the dark and were not transparently informed how and when their donations to the welfare schemes would reach the government. 

Aravindakshan also wrote to the BJP president J.P. Nadda asking about the total corpus collected during the donation drive and whether the funds were sent to the union government. He did not receive a response from the BJP president. 

The senior journalist said that prima facie, the BJP appears to be guilty of cognisable offences relating to “cheating and criminal breach of trust, criminal conspiracy and other offences under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, possible offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (if any public servants are found involved in misuse of official position), violations of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and rules relating to political party funding.”

“I wrote a letter to the BJP national president on 07-03-2022 asking if he would formally hand over the donations received in the name of government schemes to the government on behalf of the BJP. But they did not respond to my letter,” he told The Wire. 

“If the central government does not take action on my complaint, I will definitely approach the court,” he said, adding that the donation drive in the name of welfare schemes of the government was a case of “large-scale misrepresentation” to Indian citizens who contributed in “good faith believing that they were supporting Union government’s welfare schemes.”

The Wire has sent a questionnaire to BJP’s central office and J.P. Nadda regarding a possible case of unauthorised collection of funds. This report will be updated as and when a response comes.

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