BSP, AIADMK, BJD get richer; CPI-M, Trinamool, DMK turn poorer after 2014 polls

The 2014 general elections had different financial fall-outs for political parties with some becoming richer while others losing money heavily.

Updated on: Sep 28, 2014, 24:33:09 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The 2014 general elections had different financial fall-outs for political parties with some becoming richer while others losing money heavily.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) became richer by over Rs 58 crore without winning a single Lok Sabha seat. Naveen Patnaik led Biju Janata Dal, which returned to power in Odisha, witnessed a six-fold increase in its savings. AIADMK’s coffer doubled as it won 37 of the 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu.

On the other hand, CPI(M) lost half of it savings without much electoral success and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) coffers dried by about 90%. Money in DMK’s accounts went down by over Rs 38 crore. All three fared badly in this summer’s national elections.

The expenditure reports submitted by 36 political parties, mostly regional, to the Election Commission for 10 phase polling also showed that the Trinamool Congress did not have a penny when the polls were announced in first week of March.

The party collected over Rs 13 crore in a short span to win 34 of the total 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. It utilised most of the money for campaign as its closing balance after the polls was just Rs 6,000.

Its rival party, the CPI(M), faced some fund crunch to match the Trinamool money might. The party spent Rs 8.75 crore with the central office contributing just Rs 2.75 lakh for the state where it had been in power for 35 years.

In Tamil Nadu, the expenditure of the two main political parties — AIADMK and DMK — was less than the black money seized by the Election Commission. Together they spent about Rs 73.50 crore in the polls.

At end of the polls, the AIADMK got richer as it had Rs 11.8 crore as compared to opening balance of Rs 5.9 crore.

In Andhra Pradesh, where Lok Sabha and state assembly polls were held simultaneously, the debutant YSR Congress matched Chandrababu Naidu led TDP in money power. The YSR Congress collected Rs 11.57 crore as against Rs 12.31 crore by the TDP.

Another trend for the two parties was that they did not pay a penny to candidates for contesting the accounts submitted by them to the EC shows. TDP-BJP alliance came to power in Andhra with 106 seats with YSR Congress winning 67 seats with the two parties spending heavily on media coverage.

In Maharashtra, where assembly polls are to be held on October 15, the major parties — NCP and Shiv Sena — got rich contributions during Lok Sabha polls. NCP, which got poorer after the polls, won only six seats whereas Shiv Sena, which bagged 18 seats, got richer.

The two national parties — Congress and the BJP — have not submitted their expenditure reports for the Lok Sabha polls to the commission so far. But, the contributions received by the regional parties indicate that the party likely to win gets good response from its contributors and highest expenditure is on media.

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

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.