PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Intro 00:07

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the first episode of ADR’s newly launched podcast series. In this series, we will be talking about some of the latest findings of ADR reports every fortnight. My name is Shelly Mahajan and I am a Program Associate at ADR. In today’s segment, we will be talking about some very interesting data thrown up by our report on the Analysis of Funds Collected and Expenditure Incurred by Political Parties during Lok Sabha Elections, 2019.

Background 00:35

As you all know, last year India witnessed one of the most expensive elections in the history of democratic politics. Several media reports and surveys put out whopping figures highlighting how political parties spent huge sums of money on election campaigning. Many of these figures were largely based on a PEE approach – for our listeners – it means Perceptions, Experiences and Estimation, to arrive at numbers that are largely estimated figures, assumptions and observations. However, the ADR report that we are going to discuss in today’s episode is based on analysis of facts and figures directly from the horse’s mouth. In this case, the political parties that submitted their expenditure statements to the Election Commission of India (ECI).

Relevance of the topic 01:18

Before I delve deeper into today’s topic, it is important for our listeners to understand why analysis of such data is important. Firstly, it helps us to see how much each political party (whether National or Regional) is spending, which gives us an idea of the scale of their campaigns and enable comparison between their abilities to spend on election campaigns. This helps us to explore if any level playing field truly exists. Secondly, this analysis reveals the election expenditure trends over the years, their changing nature and which items of expenditure have been the focus of the parties.

All political parties (recognized National, Regional and unrecognized parties) contesting in Parliamentary & State Assembly elections are required to maintain the record of total funds collected during the election and the total expenditure incurred during the same election period apart from the various heads under which the funds were spent.

Political parties are then required to submit a statement of election expenditure to the Election Commission of India within 90 days of completion of General elections and 75 days of completion of State Assembly elections.

Intro to ADR Report 02:29

The focus of this report that we are going to discuss in today’s episode is the expenditure of National and Regional parties during last year’s Parliamentary elections, alongside which the Assembly elections to four states – Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha & Sikkim also took place. This report analyses the funds received and expenditure incurred by 7 National and 25 Regional Parties, during the total election period of 75 days.

It must also be noted that the expenditure of 18 Regional Parties were unavailable on the ECI website at the time of the analysis of this data.

Key findings 03:07

So let’s look at the 10 key findings of the report:

1. Total funds collected by the 32 political parties analyzed in this report is Rs 6400 cr. Of this total amount, 7 National Parties collected about Rs 5500 cr forming 87% share while 25 Regional parties collected Rs 860 cr which formed a meagre 13% share.

2. Among the parties, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received the highest funds of Rs 4057 cr which is 63% of the total funds collected by all parties put together. Indian National Congress (INC) collected the next highest funds of Rs 1167 cr, which is not even a close second. Other parties which collected the highest funds include YSR Congress party & All India Trinamool Congress (AITC).

3. Coming to expenditure incurred by the parties – all parties analysed spent a total of Rs 2591 cr. A huge share of this of Rs 2000 cr was spent by National Parties alone while Regional Parties only expended Rs 586 cr – only 23% of the total.

4. Among parties, BJP incurred 44% of total expenditure by all parties put together, which is Rs 1141 cr, followed by INC which spent a little over 50% of what BJP spent – Rs 626 cr. Regional parties such as Biju Janata Dal (BJD), YSR Congress Party and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) spent the highest between Rs 80 cr to 190 cr.

5. Coming to the various heads under which parties spent huge money – highest expenditure was spent by parties on publicity. For the listeners, I must elaborate that publicity includes media advertisement, publicity materials and public meetings. The amount spent by parties on publicity amounted to Rs 1500 cr followed by Rs 567 cr on travel (includes travel of party leaders and star campaigners) and Rs 528 cr on lumpsum payments made to candidates by their parties.

6. Under publicity, parties spent highest on Media Advertisement – Rs 1166 cr. 
   

7. BJP spent the highest amount on overall publicity – Rs 651 cr or 44% of the total followed by INC whose share was 32%.

8. There were also parties such as All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Mizo National Front(MNF) & Naga People’s Front (NPF) that declared zero expenditure on publicity despite contesting elections. Yes, that’s right. These parties have declared their election expenditure statements to the Election Commission of India and have contested elections. However, they say that they didn’t spend a single penny on publicity during elections.

9. National and Regional political parties collectively spent 98%of their total travel expenses or Rs 558.88 cr on their star campaigners and the remaining 5% or Rs 8.31 cr on the travel of their party leaders. 

10. BJP spent the highest on travel of star campaigners, Rs 253 cr or 45.36% of total followed by INC, Rs 127 cr or 22.74% and AITC which spent Rs 50 cr (9.08%).

Conclusion 06:42

I don’t mean to scare you with all this data and figures that have been put out in all these 10 key findings. However, I would now like to summarise these into three key summary points which can be the three takeaways from today’s episode. The overall picture that we have here is that parties’ expenditure in Lok Sabha elections 2019 were the highest and exceeded the expenditure of all previous elections. Moreover, these facts indicate that expenses on publicity especially media advertisement continue to dominate and rise every passing year.

Most importantly, we see huge differences in the overall expenditures of political parties not only among Regional and National parties but also among mainstream National parties which indicates lack of level playing field and a direct correlation between high election expenditure and election victory.

These facts raise serious concerns about the rules of our electoral democracy and the system we have in place to elect our representatives. The question facing us today is whether the Indian economy can bear the high costs that come with every election especially given their frequency. I urge you all to think about this.

07:57

Well, that’s all for today’s episode. I hope you all found this useful and interesting. If you like our work, make sure you subscribe to the podcast on our website: adrindia.org and don’t forget to write to us at [email protected] with your feedback. We will be back in two weeks with another amazing episode. Please stay tuned and thank you for listening.

*****************