Poll spend, assets just do not add up

When it came to declaring their assets, they didn’t seem to have much; yet expenses incurred by 700 candidates contesting Lok Sabha 2009 polls were much more than their declared assets, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 1, 2010, 23:28:59 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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When it came to declaring their assets, they didn’t seem to have much; yet expenses incurred by 700 candidates contesting Lok Sabha 2009 polls were much more than their declared assets.

An analysis of candidates by the Association for Democratic Reforms found that the Election Commission (EC) did not bother to find how the candidates with few assets spent loads of money on campaigning.

According to EC rules, a candidate is required to submit an affidavit while filing nomination declaring the assets and any criminal record. After the polls, each candidate has to submit another affidavit declaring the expenses incurred during the 14-day campaign period.

A candidate can spend a maximum of Rs 25 lakh for a Lok Sabha seat campaign. Only four candidates told the EC that their expenditure was more than the stipulated limit.

D.V. Ramana, who contested from Vishakhapatnam on a small regional party ticket, declared zero assets with his nomination papers. While declaring expenditure, he told the returning officer that he had spent Rs 3,50,000 on his campaign.

Similarly, Asif Jeelani, a candidate from Anantnag constituency of Jammu and Kashmir, had zero assets but he was able to spend Rs 6.04 lakh. The highest spending candidate with zero assets in 2009 elections was Anil Shirole, a BJP candidate from Pune. He spent Rs 18.60 lakh on his elections.

“Election rules are violated blatantly,” said Anil Bhairwal, national coordinator of the Association of Democratic Reforms. “Unless the EC provide information on expenditure fast to people such as exercise is of no use. We have to make election laws strong to check money power...” Every fifth candidate failed to submit the expenditure account to the election commission.

“We need a change in law to stop misuse of money power in elections,” a senior EC officer said. “For that, there is a need for a strong political will”.

Many of these candidates did not even win. “Most of these candidates are not serious ... and could have been sponsored by other candidates to cut votes of particular castes ...,” the official added.

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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