Declared election expenses lower than expected

Chennai: The 2014 Lok Sabha election has been projected as the most expensive polls to be held in the country, but on the contrary, the election expenses declared by the newly elected Members of Parliament have been shown as lower than expected. The average expense declared by the MPs in the country is only Rs 40 lakh as against the average expense limit of Rs 69 lakh, according to the Association for Democratic Reform’s report on election expenditure of elected MPs.

The MPs from the state seem to have spent their money carefully in the just concluded LS polls as their average declared expense is only Rs 35 lakhs which is much lower than the national average.
 AIADMK’s Pollachi MP C. Mahendran has declared a maximum expense of Rs 64 lakh in the state. He was followed by his party colleague and Coimbatore MP P. Nagarajan who has spent '58 lakh. The lowest election expense of a mere '5 lakh was declared in the state by  AIADMK’s Thiruvannamalai MP R. Vanaroja.

Interestingly, Sriperumbudur MP K.N. Ramachandran, who was the richest MP to be elected from the state with assets of '93.67 crore, has declared the second lowest poll expense of '9.96 lakh. PMK’s Dharmapuri MP Dr Anbumani Ramadoss has spent only '10.59 lakh.

M.G. Devasahayam, Convenor of Forum For Electoral Integrity, said that the election expense declared by the candidates were not true. “They are not giving the actual expense details in spite of so many observers being appointed by the Election Commission to monitor poll expenditure,” he said, adding that the EC has no mechanism to investigate and take penal action against candidates who submit false details. “There are a lot of loopholes in the electoral process. The candidates are making use of them,” he said.