No political party which formed govt has won more than 55 per cent vote share: ADR

New Delhi, July 2: The MLAs from 11 states have spent 50 per cent of their expenditure limit during the state elections conducted in various states. A report by the Association for Democratic Reforms states that it had analysed the election expenditure of 4,087 out of 4,120 sitting MLAs.

Analysis of Election Expenditure for Meghalaya and Karnataka have not been included in the above analysis as their data was not available at the time of making this report.

In 2014, as per the instructions from the Govt. of India, the Election Commission of India revised the election expenditure limit for candidates contesting for Lok /Rajya Sabha and Assembly elections. For Larger states, the limit for assembly elections was revised from Rs. 16 lakhs to Rs. 28 Lakhs, whereas for the smaller states, it was increased from Rs. 8 Lakhs to Rs. 20 Lakhs. It is to be noted that this report has been generated keeping the assigned expenditure limit during the year when the particular State Assembly Elections were held.

MLAs from 11 states namely Kerala, Tripura, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Assam, and Bihar have spent more than 50 % of the expenditure limit.

Among the States, which have gone for elections in the last 5 years (2013-2018), it has been observed that the maximum amount of expenditure by the MLAs has been done for the vehicles used for the campaign. They have spent only 5% on the campaigning through print and electronic media.

Analysis on the basis of Vote Share

• None of the political parties/ alliances of political parties forming the government have won with more than 55% of vote share.
• Arunachal Pradesh has the highest vote share i.e. 53.1% while Jharkhand has the lowest i.e. 31.2 %.
• Besides Arunachal Pradesh, there are 4 other states namely Gujarat, Tripura, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh where the political parties/ alliances of political parties forming the government have won with more than 50 % of vote share.
• Out of 1,356 MLAs with declared criminal cases, 128 have declared cases related to electoral malpractices such as bribery (171E), undue influence or personation at an election (171F and 171 C), illegal payments in connection with elections (171 H) etc.
• Bihar has the highest number of MLAs i.e. 38 who have declared cases related to electoral malpractices, followed by 20 MLAs from Karnataka and 18 MLAs from Uttar Pradesh. 95(74%) out these 128 MLAs have won with more than 40 % of vote share.