As per available reports, the All-India Trinamool Congress outspent all other recognised national and State parties that contested the five Assembly elections that concluded in May and submitted their election expenditure reports to the Election Commission as on Saturday.
The BJP’s election expenditure report had not been published by the EC as on Saturday.
According to the reports published by the EC on September 30, the Trinamool spent ₹154.28 crore on the Assembly campaign, while the Congress spent ₹84.93 crore in Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and Assam.
The Trinamool’s expenses were divided into spending by the central party office (₹79.66 crore) and expenditure on candidates (₹74.61 crore). Of the expenditure by the party headquarters, ₹33.02 crore were on travel expenses of star campaigners and ₹11.93 crore on advertisements.
The DMK was in the second place in terms of the highest expenditure by parties that have declared their spending so far. It spent ₹114.14 crore for the Tamil Nadu and Puducherry elections. It spent ₹39.78 crore on media advertisements and ₹54.47 crore on candidates, which includes money given to candidates and expenditure incurred on publishing their criminal antecedents as per the Supreme Court order.
The AIADMK spent ₹57.33 crore for the Tamil Nadu and Puducherry polls as well as the Kaniyakumari Lok Sabha by-election and ₹56.65 crore on media advertisements alone. This includes spending on print, electronic and online ads as well as “bulk SMS”.
The CPI declared an expenditure of ₹13.19 crore on all five elections. Assam’s Asom Gana Parishad spent ₹15.16 lakh on its campaign in the State, while the All-India United Democratic Fund spent ₹1.29 crore in the State polls.
