Congress recently announced its crowdfunding campaign ‘Donate for Desh’ to raise funds from the general public following reports of massive seizures of unaccounted cash from Congress leaders. Days after the announcement, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on 18th December launched the campaign in New Delhi.
Incidentally, the links for the Congress crowdfunding campaign land the donors on BJP’s donation page. It has come to light that the funds and donations through the Congress party’s campaign are adding to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s coffers. As per reports, the grand old party kicked off the crowdfunding campaign without registering the related domain names. Reports add that the BJP secured the website domains after Congress failed to register the relevant domains for the donation websites promoted in its fundraising campaign.
The links redirected the donors to BJP and OPIndia’s donation pages. Simply put, when a person opens the Donatefordesh.org website, the user is redirected to BJP’s donation page which seeks details like donors’ name, mobile number, and email ID.
Similarly Donatefordesh.com and Donatefordesh.in take the user to the OpIndia Support pages.
Following the goof-up in crowdfunding, netizens have been taking a jibe at the Congress party calling it the grand old party’s moye-moye moment. Netizens have slammed Congress asking the grand old party if it didn’t have any domain for these websites why it kicked off the campaign prematurely.
Several users called it a major failure of the IT department of Congress party. According to several Twitter users, the failure alludes to the callous or non-serious approach of the party for its own crowdfunding campaign as otherwise, it had enough time and resources to run basic errands.
However, it’s not that Congress hasn’t received donations in the last few years. In 2021-22, the party received donations totaling ₹95 crore through electoral bonds. Additionally, in September 2023, the Congress announced that it possesses assets worth about ₹700 crores.
Nonetheless, the Congress party will be collecting donations both online and offline. On December 28, 2023, the party is celebrating its 138th anniversary. In alignment with that, it has issued an appeal to its supporters to contribute in multiples of ₹138, while urging its district and state-level workers to donate ₹1380.
The campaign has been initiated by its president, Mallikarjun Kharge, who has donated ₹1.38 lakh to the party. Congress will conduct this campaign online until December 28, 2023, following which its workers will go door-to-door to collect donations. However, the crowdfunding campaign has been marred with a major setback and failure for the party’s IT department as it lost the race for website domains to BJP and OpIndia.