Congress’s Shashi Tharoor reported the highest individual expenditure of ₹94.89 lakh. File.
| Photo Credit: PTI
Candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha election each spent an average of ₹57.23 lakh for campaigning, according to an Atlas on last year’s general elections released by the Election Commission of India on Wednesday (February 12, 2025). While the Congress’s Shashi Tharoor reported the highest individual expenditure of ₹94.89 lakh, the Trinamool Congress’s Pratima Mondal spent only ₹12,500.
Speaking at the release of the Atlas, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar reiterated that the polling data system was robust, with inbuilt “red flags” to ensure that “nothing can go wrong”.
Also read:General Elections 2024 | When campaign trails were carnivals
Lakhs of officials, including booth level officers, feed data into the system. “As a design, nothing can go wrong… The system throws up red flags,” he said, adding that this makes the Election Commission “extremely confident” that nothing can wrong. If someone makes an error, the system will not accept it, he said.
The Opposition, led by the Congress, has been raising concerns about unusual numbers of additions and deletions in voters lists in some States like Maharashtra.
Highs and lows
According to the Atlas, the Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi spent ₹92.82 lakh on his campaign in Wayanad. Three Karnataka MPs Sunil Bose, B.Y. Raghavendra and E. Tukaram were on the list of the 15 MPs with the highest campaign expenditure. The DMK MP from Coimbatore, Ganapathy Rajkumar P., was in the ninth position, having spent ₹92.96 lakh on his campaign. Four Himachal Pradesh MPs each spent an average of ₹85.46 lakh.
Those who kept their expenditure low included Baramulla MP Engineer Rashid, who spent ₹2.10 lakh, and Union Minister Kiren Rijiju, who spent ₹20.67 lakh.
The amount of money candidates are permitted to spend on their campaigns is subject to a ceiling. The maximum limit of election expenses was revised in 2022, considering the increase in the number of electors, the cost inflation index, and virtual campaigns. The latest maximum expenditure limit for candidates in a Parliamentary constituency and in an Assembly constituency is ₹95 lakh for lareger States, such as Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra, and ₹75 lakh in smaller States and Union Territories like Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, and Lakshadweep.
The Atlas also showed that there has been a nearly 15-fold increase in political parties and a five-fold growth in contesting candidates since the first general election. The number of candidates contesting in the 2024 election was an astounding 8,360, with 7,190 of them forfeiting their deposits.
Published – February 12, 2025 10:38 pm IST