Hyderabad: Centre for Media Studies (CMS) has released a report on Poll Expenditure of 2019 elections here on Monday organized by Election Watch Telangana.
CMS chairman Dr Bhasker Rao has described the recent elections as “Watershed Election” as new ways of poll funding were done like government initiated charges. He said the expenditure in 2019 elections was around Rs 55,000 crore, more than double of 2014 elections. The amount was spent by candidates, political parties, ECI and others.
Addressing mediapersons here on Monday, Dr Bhasker Rao said this time the percentage of individual candidate’s expenditure was more than political parties i.e. each candidate had spent over Rs 40 crore. Criticizing the ECI role in restraining poll expenditure, he suggested it should conduct a transparent analysis on expenditure details submitted by winners and losers and come up with more accountable ways.
He said poll funding by corporates in the name of transparency, anonymity was baseless, it was black money of political parties and candidates, spent as elections expenditure. He said the voters should understand the link between the poll expenditure and over all corruption in the country, especially citizens availing public services.
V V Rao of Telangana Watch Election said the political parties were behind the huge increase in poll expenditure. Uppala Gopal Rao from Senior Citizens Foundation, Venkat Reddy from MV Foundation and Srivasa Reddy also spoke.
