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In a five-year period ending in March 2020, 18 Indian political parties spent more than ₹3,400 crore on publicity, according to a 2021 analysis of their submitted annual audit reports. That was 52.3% of the parties’ combined election expenditure of more than ₹6,500 crore. The period is FY 2015–16 through FY 2019–20—not the five years immediately before today.
What the figures show
The figures below are from Scroll.in and FactChecker.in’s 2021 analysis by Nidhi Jacob and Gautam Doshi. It covered seven national and 11 regional parties, not every political party in India. The amounts are reported expenditure from party accounts, not independently measured advertising placements.
| Measure | Reported figure | What it represents |
|---|---|---|
| Combined election expenditure | More than ₹6,500 crore | 18 analyzed parties, FY 2015–16 to FY 2019–20 |
| Combined publicity expenditure | More than ₹3,400 crore; 52.3% | Publicity as a share of those parties’ combined election expenditure |
| BJP share of combined election outlay | 56%; more than ₹3,600 crore | Share of the 18 parties’ total election expenditure |
| Congress share of combined election outlay | 21.41%; more than ₹1,400 crore | Share of the 18 parties’ total election expenditure |
These are party election expenses, not advertising paid for by government departments. The underlying report is Scroll.in/FactChecker.in’s analysis.
How much did the largest parties spend on publicity?
Within each party’s own election expenditure, the analysis counted more than ₹2,000 crore in BJP publicity spending, equal to 54.87% of its election outlay. Congress spent ₹560 crore on publicity, or 40.08% of its election expenditure. The percentages use each party’s own election expenditure as the denominator; they are not shares of the combined publicity total.
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BJP and Congress together accounted for more than 77% of the 18 parties’ overall election expenditure. The next-largest shares of that combined total were Samajwadi Party, 3.95%; DMK, 3.06%; YSR Congress, 2.17%; BSP, 2.04%; and TMC, 1.83%.
What happened in FY 2019–20?
For FY 2019–20 alone, the report put combined election spending by the 18 parties at around ₹2,800 crore, of which more than ₹1,300 crore was classified as publicity or propaganda. BJP accounted for more than ₹700 crore, or 57.6% of that year’s publicity total. Congress represented 29.5%, NCP 3.6%, and Aam Aadmi Party 1.7%.
The reported BJP publicity amount rose from ₹180 crore in FY 2015–16 to ₹790 crore in FY 2019–20. Congress’s reported amount rose from more than ₹8.3 crore to more than ₹400 crore across the same endpoints. Congress publicity spending fell 86.5% in FY 2017–18 compared with FY 2016–17, according to the analysis. These are year-to-year figures within the historical series, not current spending levels.
What counted as “publicity”?
FactChecker combined several account headings to make its comparison: advertisement and media expenses in print and electronic media, social media, morcha and rally expenses, flags and hoardings, and election-strategy campaigning expenses. Many parties had a “publicity” sub-head, while some state parties reported “party propaganda” separately. The aggregation is useful for comparison, but the categories were not perfectly uniform across party accounts.
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Non-election publicity was a narrower comparison
The analysis also looked at publicity outside election expenditure, recorded under administrative/general or other expenditure. Only Congress, NCP, Aam Aadmi Party, JD(U), and Shiv Sena supplied this information consistently for all five years, so the comparison covered just those five parties.
Across that group, Congress reported ₹118 crore in non-election publicity—69.2% of the five parties’ combined amount. AAP accounted for 17.1%, NCP 6.6%, JD(U) 5.1%, and Shiv Sena 2%. In FY 2019–20, Congress reported around ₹15 crore in non-poll publicity, including more than ₹4 crore on social media. These amounts should not be added to or treated as directly comparable with the election-publicity totals above without accounting for the distinct category and party coverage.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Later figures are not a direct update
Subsequent reports provide context, but they use different periods, party coverage, or accounting categories:
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- For FY 2024–25, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) reported BJP expenditure of ₹3,335.368 crore under “election/general propaganda” and Congress expenditure of ₹896.225 crore under election expenditure. Those are separate reported categories and cannot be read as a like-for-like update to the 2015–20 publicity series. See ADR’s March 2026 summary.
- ADR’s May 2026 analysis covered 36 of 67 regional parties for FY 2024–25; accounts for the other 31 were unavailable on the Election Commission of India website as of May 27, 2026. Fifteen of the 36 analyzed parties spent more than 55% of their total expenditure on election expenditure. See ADR’s regional-party summary.
- For the 2024 Lok Sabha election and simultaneous assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, and Sikkim, ADR analyzed statements from five national and 27 regional parties. It reported combined expenditure of ₹3,352.81 crore, including ₹2,008.295 crore on publicity. Statements from 21 national and regional parties were unavailable when the report was prepared, and unrecognized parties were not covered. This election-period dataset is not comparable to the 2015–20 annual-account series. See ADR’s 2024 election expenditure analysis.
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