Slump fails to plug poll cash flow

A whopping Rs 45 crore in cash was seized in raids across five states till Wednesday - the eve of Phase-II of elections. Political pundits said this isn’t even the “tip of the ice-berg.” Rs 14,000cr black money pumped into election, say analysts. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 24, 2009, 01:52:38 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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“There is no recession in cricket,” said Indian Premier League boss Lalit Modi publicly at a time when the world is reeling under a global economic slump. A league of politicians are making a similar statement, but not quite as overtly as Modi.

A whopping Rs 45 crore in cash was seized in raids across five states till Wednesday - the eve of Phase-II of elections. Political pundits said this isn’t even the “tip of the ice-berg.”

Professor Arun Kumar of Centre for Economic Statistics and Planning in Jawaharlal Nehru University, said, “The amount of money seized is even less than 0.1 per cent of the black money being used in elections.” In 1998, 20 sitting MPs had admitted to him that they had given money for votes.

An estimate of black money pumped in this elections puts the figure between Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 14,000 crore. And this is between the major national and state parties only.

A CMS study in February 2009 of 18,000 people across 19 states had found that 21 per cent of the electorate took cash for votes. CMS director Bhaskara Rao said, “It means that expenditure per constituency is not less than Rs 2 crore for a candidate of a major political party.” The poll panel has capped the spending per constituency at Rs 25 lakh.

In Karnataka’s mine rich Bellary the police seized Rs 8 crore from bank vans this week.

In Andhra Pradesh, where the Congress is facing a double challenge from the Telugu Desam Party and Praja Rajyam Party, Rs 22 crore cash and liquor worth Rs 5 crore was seized till April 20.

Even former poll panel chief N Gopalaswami was candid enough to admit that they had failed to check the use of black money power in elections. “It is a manifestation of a disease, not the actual disease,” he said, terming black money a bigger problem of economy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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