Kerala MLAs Claim Top Spot in ADR Report On Election Expenditure

Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) a non-partisan and non-governmental organisation in the area of electoral reforms has come out with a report on election expenditure and vote share of 4,087 out of 4,120 sitting MLAs. Meghalaya and Karnataka have been excluded from the study due to lack of data.

The report said '"MLAs from 11 states namely Kerala, Tripura, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Assam, and Bihar have spent more than 50 per cent of the expenditure limit."

Kerala topped the list among large states with an average expenditure of Rs 19.64 lakh. Among smaller states Tripura topped the list with an average expenditure of Rs 11.25 lakh.

Current expenditure limits are Rs 28 lakh for larger states and Rs 20 lakh for smaller states. The limits were raised in 2014 by the election commission from Rs 16 lakh for larger states and Rs 8 lakh for smaller states.

While analysing the vote share the report said:

"None of the political parties/alliances of political parties forming the government have won with more than 55 per cent of vote share. Arunachal Pradesh has the highest vote share i.e. 53.1 per cent while Jharkhand has the lowest i.e. 31.2 per cent. 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 per cent of vote share."

The report has also brought out the statistics on cases pertaining to electoral malpractices. Bihar tops all states with 38 MLAs having cases related to electoral malpractices.