Senior members of the NDA government have seen a fall in their wealth before and after the elections, but the change is not explained by their official spending on the elections.
The details of the assets of Cabinet Ministers were uploaded to the Prime Minister’s website on Monday, and offered a comparison with the assets declared by ministers just a few months ago, before the general election.
The Prime Minister has seen a Rs.26-lakh fall in his assets from the pre-election Rs.1.52 crore to Rs.1.26 crore as of August. The outflow has been from his bank deposits and fixed deposits, a close look at Election Commission documents shows. However, this change is not explained by his election expenses; as per official records, Mr. Modi spent only Rs.27,000 of his personal funds on his two parliamentary campaigns in Vadodara and Varanasi, the rest of his poll expenditure coming from party funds.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s declaration on the PMO website does not specify whether the assets declared are from before or after the election, but there is a nearly Rs.5-lakh increase between the assets declared by Mr. Singh before the election and the assets now uploaded to the PMO website. Mr. Singh officially spent Rs.1 lakh of his own money on his election campaign in Lucknow.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s assets as on the PMO website have not been updated after the elections, dating back to March of this year. In April this year, when she filed her nomination, Ms. Swaraj declared assets worth Rs.17.55 crore.
Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley is over Rs.97 lakh richer than when he filed his nomination for his unsuccessful campaign from Amritsar. The major change is his purchase in April this year of a house in Amritsar, which he had hoped to make his constituency. Mr. Jaitley declared having spent just Rs.50,000 of his own money on his election campaign.
Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari is roughly Rs.20,000 poorer after the election, but spent just over Rs.7 lakh on his campaign, official documents show.
