Candidates assets worth Rs 82 cr, wives' Rs 266 cr

Guwahati, Mar 24: Asom's politicians may have different ideologies but one thing is common among them, their wives are super rich.

Most of the wives of politicians are housewives or at best work in some social voluntary organisations but they are far more rich than their all powerful husbands.

In fact, according to affidavits filed by all the 545 candidates for the first phase of polls, their wives are three times richer than them. In fact politician's wives combined asset is worth a whooping Rs 266 crore. Not bad by any standards, especially when the combined total of all candidates is just Rs 82 crore, of which Rs 16 crore belongs to just one man, Badaruddin Ajmal, the perfume magnet.

Most of them are housewives and have no known source of income.

The affidavit reveals that most of the candidates have around Rs 3 lakh in cash to fight the election but in comparison, the average cash holding of wives vary from Rs 6.3 lakh to Rs 43 lakhs.

The asset distribution is stark. A scrutiny of affidavit shows that average holding of asset per candidate is about Rs 10.12 lakh while the wives possess about Rs 27 lakh on an average.

The list of ornaments is even more interesting. Here, however, the wives were expected to be ahead, but the figures are mind boggling. The total ornaments of the candidates who are in fray so far was valued at Rs 3.10 crore while wives have collective ornaments worth Rs 35 crores. Not bad at all for the supposedly poor state.

A look into the immovable property shows on an average the wife of a candidate has around three houses in different parts of the state and country and landed property in seven places.

But their politician-husbands are comparatively so poor that many of them supposedly do not possess more than Rs 10,000 cash balance to fight the election, where average expenditure will be around Rs 25 lakh per constituency.

UNI