Prominent candidates profit from polls

Contesting the Lok Sabha elections has always taken a heavy toll on the financial health of those in the fray. However, when it comes to the Capital, several prominent candidates have actually ended up making profits, a phenomenon that has surprised one and all.

A day after conclusion of the poll process, when the candidates sat down to calculate their election expenditure, they found that they were surplus by several lakhs, if not crores. Almost all the prominent candidates of both the Congress and the BJP had donations pouring in mostly in cash in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. All of them had their own support bank and received financial help from a cross-section of people including local party leaders, small-time businessmen and industrialists.

Fund managers of many candidates confided that their coffers swelled during the Lok Sabha polls. “There was so much inflow that we could not spend all the money during the entire campaign,” one of them said.

Candidates from the BJP, the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party and even a few independents have ended up with surplus money even after spending lakhs in their election campaign. The BJP candidates benefited more because in the run-up to the elections, the donors carried away by the “India Shining” campaign were eager to give money to them rather than the Congress.

However, the Congress candidates did not lag behind with the party being in power in Delhi. A prominent businessman from South Delhi said: “For the important leaders of the major political parties, even contesting elections has become a means to earn money. Gone are the days when these candidates had to sell their property and jewellery and collect small donations from the people to contest elections. It has now become a profitable business. In fact, elections are being used as an opportunity by the candidates to collect funds from all the possible sources. They often end up having more in their kitty in just two weeks.”