New Delhi: As ongoing Lok Sabha polls reach the sixth phase, a new study has found that the total money spent on all elections in last five years has crossed Rs1,50,000 crore and over half of these funds have come from “unaccounted sources”.
The study comes at a time when various political parties are accusing each other of using alleged black money in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls, which began on April 7 and will continue till May 12.
According to the study, more than Rs 1,50,000 crore has been spent across various elections held in India over the past five years. “This is a conservative estimate. Out of this huge amount, more than half is black money. The black money funding for polls is the mother of all corruption in our nation,” the study said. Of this, Rs1.5 lakh crore, one-fifth or Rs30,000 crore is on account of the current Lok Sabha election. One-third of this total amount, or Rs 45,000-50,000 crore, has been spent on state assembly elections, it found.
About Rs 30,000 crore has been spent on panchayat polls, Rs 20,000 crore for mandals, Rs 15,000 crore for municipal elections and a further Rs 10,000 crore for zilla parishads, it added. In a typical Lok Sabha poll, media campaigns (25 per cent) and pre-poll expenditure (20-25 per cent) account for a big pie of the spending.
