With Rs 1 lakh crore spent, India’s second longest election comes to an end

New Delhi: The voting in the Lok Sabha election, which was India’s second longest and spread over 44 days from April 19 to June 1, has come to an end on Saturday. Only our inaugural parliamentary election that lasted for over four months was longer.

The seven-phase election had 969 million-odd eligible voters. The polling percentages though have been lower than in 2019 with factors such as the heat and lack of any overarching narrative or resentment being cited as reasons.

Some Rs 1 lakh crore was said to have been spent making it one of the most expensive elections ever in the world, rivalling the combined 2020 US elections.

That one stat highlighted how money has been flowing over and above the spending limits of Rs 75-95 lakh for each candidate.

These limits have been raised at least 30X times from the Rs 25,000 allowed per candidate during the first general election in 1951-52 to little avail. According to an estimate in 2019, nearly Rs 100 crore was spent per Lok Sabha constituency! The math remains to be done before we know how much higher it has been in 2024.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had over 206 rallies/outreach programmes in this election campaign, which was way more than his nearly 145 such engagements five years ago. He also gave 80 interviews to the media before heading for his 45-hour-long meditation on Kanyakumari’s Vivekananda rock.

On the other side, from the Congress, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi were involved in 107 and 108 public outreach programmes respectively.