Lok Sabha elections 2024: Voting for two phases of Lok Sabha elections has been done. There are still five phases of voting left. The enthusiasm of the great festival of democracy can be seen in every village and every street. Amidst this excitement, a big revelation has come to light regarding election expenditure. Which is confirming that the Lok Sabha elections 2024 are going to break previous records in terms of expenditure and become the most expensive electoral exercise in the world.

N Bhaskar Rao, President of Center for Media Studies (CMS), a non-profit organization which has been monitoring election related expenses for the last 35 years, has made this claim. He says, the estimated expenditure in this Lok Sabha election is expected to reach Rs 1.35 lakh crore. Which is more than double the Rs 60,000 crore spent in 2019.

More expenditure on public meeting
Bhaskar Rao says that this expenditure includes all direct or indirect expenses related to elections including political parties and organizations, candidates, government and Election Commission. Rao told TV9 Bharatvarsh that he revised the initial expenditure estimate to Rs 1.35 lakh crore from Rs 1.2 lakh crore. This includes post-disclosure figures of electoral bonds and accounting of all election-related expenses.

Expenses start even before the election is announced
Bhaskar says, now leaders do less door to door campaigning in elections. Instead of that, now they spend more on public meetings. He said, election expenditure has increased very rapidly since 2014. The reason for this is corporate. Apart from this, now a lot is spent on workers. Now local leaders are less, leaders from outside get more tickets. That’s why the expenses also increase.

Estimated expenditure per voter is Rs 1400
According to CMS President, expenses start happening even before the announcement of elections. Political rallies, transportation, appointment of workers, everything is spent. He said the Election Commission’s budget for managing the elections is expected to be 10-15 percent of the total expenditure estimate. With 96.6 crore voters in India, the expenditure per voter is estimated to be around Rs 1,400.

More than the expenses of American elections
This expenditure is more than the expenditure on the 2020 US elections, which was $14.4 billion or approximately Rs 1.2 lakh crore. The most important thing in all this is that the parties show less expenditure to the Election Commission. Whereas the expenses are quite high. Let’s take a look at the expenditure on Lok Sabha elections from 2004 to 2019…

Election year expenditure (in crores)
2004- 14000 crores
2009- 20,000 crores
2014- 30,000 crores
2019-  55,000+ crores