 "Stark contrast: Cong has most crorepati candidates, but party faces cash crunch")
The irony is hard to escape. Nearly three-fourth of the candidates fielded by the Congress party for this Lok Sabha elections are crorepatis, but the party is scrambling for money to fund their campaigns.
A report in _The Times of India_todaysaysthe party is facing a severe cash crunch.
A Congress MP told ToI that the financial deficitthat the Congress is facing this time is ‘unprecedented’.This may be the reason that you hardly see any Congress campaigns even as the BJP seems to be carpet bombing with ab ki baar Modi sarkaar. Narendra Modi smiles at you from billboards at every nook and corner and televisions.
Why is the Congress facing such a cash crunch? The Hoot, a website that keeps a close watch on the Indian media, has the answer.
“The sheer volume of the BJP’s advertising presence–three to four ads per day in the newspapers with the highest advertising rates–seems to confirm the general hunch that big business is contributing mightily to this campaign. The Congress can barely keep up with this barrage, and mostly fails to,” a brief posted on the website said yesterday.
That the business community has been by and large rooting for a BJP win is no secret. Many industrialists and brokerages have predicted that an economic revival is possible only if the BJP-led NDA comes to power.
Betting big on Modi, foreign brokerage house Goldman Sachs recently upgraded Indian shares to “overweight” from “marketweight” and raised its target on the Nifty to 7,600. It had cited reduced external vulnerabilities, including a narrowing current account deficit, and potential for gains ahead of elections that conclude in May as reasons for its move. A Nomura report yesterdaysaid a BJP governmentwill help the rupee rise to 58 against the dollar and trigger up to 10 percent rally in the stock market.
Precisely, the business community knows where to put their money.
Apart from the BJP, it is the common man who is reaping the benefits of the elections. Another Times of India article notes that this time, the nearly Rs 30,000 crore election spending turning out to be a boon to numerous professions and trades. From drivers to caterers to chartered accountants–everybody is making money.
Videographers, who hardly had work, find their hands full as theElection Commission has ordered that every rally and roadshow must be recorded. With more pamphlets and posters, the printing business is also making money.Demand for chartered accountants has also gone up as parties are to submit copies of audited annual accounts.
The Aam Aadmi Party may be falling through the cracks, but clearly the aam aadmi is raking in the moolah.
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