Fiercely-contested Indian Lok Sabha elections become world's most expensive: Report

New Delhi: India the biggest democracy in the world had recently held the Lok Sabha elections. The general elections have become too expensive over time.

As per the Centre for Media Studies, all political parties and candidates had spent more than 60,000 crore (USD 8.7 billion), more than double the money spent during 2014 lok Sabha polls, to woo Indian voters.

According to Bloomberg report, money spent by political parties is around Rs 700 per voter or about Rs 100 crore in each parliamentary constituency.

In few Lok sabha constituencies, political parties had spend more on publicity and logistics additionally, the constituency had also distributed surplus cash for votes, said the report. Election Commission mandates a maximum of Rs 70 lakh spending by a candidate.

According to OpenSecrets.org, around USD 6.5 billion was spent during the US presidential and parlimentarly election in 2016.

N Bhaskara Rao, chairman of CMS said that expenditure in the next 2024 Lok Sabha election may cross Rs 1 lakh crores.

“Mother of all corruption lies in the spiraling election expenditure,’’ added Rao. “If we are not able to address this, we can’t check corruption in India.’’