NEW DELHI: A whopping amount was spent in 2019 polls and the scale of expenditure should “scare us,” a city-based think-tank Monday claimed.
The Centre for Media Studies after releasing a report on 2019 polls expenditure, also claimed the recently-concluded election has signalled that the more the expenditure, the “more vicious and ugly” the campaigns become.
At a function held at the IIC here, a panel discussion was also held in which former chief election commissioner S Y Quraishi also participated.
The CMS, in its report has claimed that about Rs 60,000 crore were spent in the 2019 elections, and the formal expenditure component, i.e. the amount spent by the Election Commission is nearly 15-20 per cent of that.”
“The scale of the expenditure should scare us and compel us to think of taking corrective steps to build a stronger democracy,” CMS’s chairman N Bhaskara Rao said.
The report has also claimed that, on an average “nearly Rs 100 crores per Lok Sabha constituency has been spent”.
“It is high time the Parliament deliberate on poll expenditure for campaigns, and about election funding, preceded by serious national discussions,” the report said.
Rao said, the idea of publishing the report was to present a “larger picture” on poll spending to people, as there are other components also involved in it, such as money spent on campaigns, logistics, and other miscellaneous cost, which are “not factored in”, he said.
He also said, different political parties were “invited” but “no representatives from any party” turned up for the event, adding the report is based on various studies conducted by the CMS. (AGENCIES)
Follow our WhatsApp channel