Delhi Elections: Can Election Commission Curb Flow of Black Money?

By Deepak Parvatiyar

January 30, 2015

On January 28, the Delhi High Court dismissed a petition seeking stay on Delhi elections scheduled for February 7 this year.  The petitioner had sought the court to set aside the Lieutenant Governor’s decision to dissolve the last Assembly on grounds that elections would hugely burden the state exchequer. While the court dismissed the plea saying “new elections are on and nothing is left in the petition”, the petition did succeed in bringing to the fore, the expenses entailed in conducting elections even in a small state such as Delhi.

Huge Cost of Conducting Elections in Delhi

Before we analyse the impact of elections on economy, it needs to be understood that any democratic process including elections, has far wider considerations than just the cost involved.  This is perhaps the reason why last year in February, the Government cleared a proposal of the Election Commission of India (ECI) for an upward revision of the expenditure limits for both Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies.
In Delhi, the cap on election expenses for each contesting candidate is Rs 14 lakh. With 673 candidates in the fray for the 70 assembly seats in the national capital, the cost on electioneering therefore, by taking the higher side into account, would be Rs 94.22 crore. Besides, the election commission’s allocated budget of Rs 70 crore for elections makes the elections in Delhi an almost Rs 200 crore affair. Add to it the hidden cost of deploying around one lakh government employees specially for the purpose of administering elections in Delhi. Obviously, their deputation impacts productivity in their respective government departments and the economy as well.

Black Money Flows in Elections despite Limit on Expenses

The issue is rather tricky since the unaccounted or black money component makes the whole issue of election finance murkier. Delhi does not remain insulated from such an evil with Arvind Kejriwal hinting at this malaise by exhorting voters to take money from BJP and Congress but vote for AAP.

In a workshop conducted by the Office of Delhi’s Chief Electoral Officer for the Returning Officers, Assistant Expenditure Observers, and Returning Officers, before the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections, election expenditure was classified into two specific categories – a) Expenditure permissible under the Law, and b) Illegal expenditure (that was needed to be stopped).

On Paper, Candidates Declare Expenses far less than the Limit

An analysis based on the election expense declarations of 67 out of the 70 newly elected MLAs of Delhi to the Election Commission of India, showed the average amount of money spent by them in the elections is only about Rs 7.16 Lakh, which was 51 per cent of the expense limit (Rs 14 lakh)!

The Delhi based NGOs, Delhi Election Watch (DEW) and Association For Democratic Reforms (ADR), further pointed out that the maximum expense on electioneering that was declared by a candidate was about Rs 12.53 lakh (just about 90 per cent of the expense limit) by the Aam Aadmi Party’s Girish Soni, who had contested the 2013 elections from Madipur constituency of West Delhi. He was followed by another AAP candidate from Mongolpuri in North West Delhi, Rakhi Birla, who had spent Rs 11.65 lakh that was just about 83 per cent of the total expense limit.

Again consider that the BJP candidate from Janakpuri assembly constituency of West Delhi, Jagdish Mukhi, won the election by spending just Rs 2.93 lakh (hardly about 21 per cent of the expense limit)!

These figures are indeed surprising against the backdrop of the ever increasing demand before the ECI by candidates to raise the ceiling on campaigning. Even the DEW and ADR reports have pointed out that “Candidates have constantly claimed that the election expenditure limit set by the ECI is very low”.  Yet, actual figures submitted by the candidates show just the opposite – In fact studies based on the election expenses declaration by 67 of the 70 Delhi MLAs after the 2013 elections showed that 34 MLAs (51 per cent) had declared election expenses of less than 50 per cent of the Rs. 14 lakh expense limit.

Will Black Money Impact Delhi Polls?

So, if elections could be won by spending less than the stipulated amount, why should the ECI reconsider and recommend increasing the limit as it did in February 2014? Or why should the candidates make such demands to increase the ceiling at all? This also suggests that efforts such as the officials of the expenditure-monitoring team of the Election Commission maintaining a “shadow expenditure register” could not fetch desired results. Ostensibly, there are “highly corrupt arrangements” to show reduced amounts!

This, therefore, brings to the fore the black money component that comes into play in electioneering, which indeed is a complex process. Candidates do prefer using unaccounted money in campaigning for obvious reasons – It gives them enough financial muscle to create an uneven playing field and lack of fair competition among other things.

It is pertinent to point out a report in an online British newspaper just before the 2013 Delhi assembly elections, that quoted unnamed candidates acknowledging that the real cost of campaigning was at least “20 times” more than the expenses declared by the past MLAs.