Admitted that elections to the local bodies is a necessary evil but the cumbersome process of elections and more importantly electioneering is an elaborate and a 'grand affair' in India. With the curtains falling on the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) polls, the city seems to be enjoying a lull after the noisy election season.
In the silence, one is forced to wonder how much money went into the process of electioneering in the Maha BBMP Polls 2010. As per conservative estimates each candidate has spent about Rs 1.8 crore over the past month.
Assuming that three contestants stood for polls with popular election symbols in each of the 198 wards, a total of 594 were in the fray in the civic body polls. These calculations exempt the independent candidates as they would not have spent as much money as the contestants backed by parties.
If each of the 594 candidate spent an average of Rs 1.8 crore, the total amount of money spent for this election multiplies to Rs 1069.2 crore.
Out the 594 candidates, 396 lost the elections in turn losing 712.8 crore. This leaves Rs 356.4 crore as the estimate spent by the other candidates, who also managed to woo the voters.
Now, these 198 lucky candidates, who were elected by the people and for the people as the corporators of Bangalore, will try to recover the money they spent from 'we the citizens'.
The people will be soon hit by this 'paisa vasol' as the corporators will get busy to get the returns on their investments from the very first day of taking office.
Reeling under the current economy, the poor commoners will be arm wrenched into paying up Rs 356.4 crore to the corporators for getting your files moved.
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