What economic slowdown? Wealth of re-contesting MPs soared 145% in past 5 years

India’s economy might have slowed from 8 percent to below 5 percent growth over the past few years, but that doesn’t seem to have affected the asset creating abilities of our politicians much.

According to data from the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), average assets of the 396 re-contesting Members of Parliament between the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 and the ongoing one jumped a stunning 145 percent. Average assets grew by Rs 8.5 crore.In the 2009 elections, the average assets of these candidates was about Rs 5.8 crore.

Is it any wonder that our politicians don’t have any sense of urgency about the deteriorating state of the economy?

No prizes for guessing which party’s MPs saw the biggest jump in average assets. Yes, it’s the Congress Party. The average assets among the 155 recontesting candidates from the grand old partyincreased to Rs 16 crore from Rs 6 crore in the previous elections.

However, by percentage growth, the Samajwadi Party showed the biggest jump in the average assets of its re-contesting candidates: a 250 percent surge to Rs 6 crore plus.

The top two candidates declaring the highest increase in their assets are from the Congress: Gaddam Vivekanand from Andhra Pradesh led the pack with a whopping 265 percent jump in assets declared to Rs 193 crore between the elections in 2009 and 2014.According to a Mint report , Vivekanand, along with his wife Saroja and daughter Vritika, controls the Visaka group of companies, which has interests in thermal energy, construction, real estate and the media.

Following him is Congress candidate from Haryana Naveen Jindal, head of Jindal Steel and Power, whose assets soared 135 percent to Rs 308 crore, a jump of Rs 177 crore.

Nama Nageshwara Rao, a Telegu Desam Party candidate from Andhra Pradesh, showed the third-highest increase in assets to Rs 338 crore. Rao, who used to run infrastructure company Madhucon Projects, saw his assets climb by Rs 164 crore.

BJP candidate and former Bollywood star, Shatrughan Sinha, showed a staggering 778 percent increase in assets to Rs 131 crore from the previous elections.

For more details, look at the chart below:

Other rich listers: Pinaki Mishra, who is a Supreme Court lawyer, is the richest candidate from Odisha, while Uday Singh from the BJP, who is contesting from Bihar, describes himself as an industrialist.H D Kumaraswamy, who is the son for former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, is a well-known Kannada movie producer and distributor.

Congress candidates Shruti Choudhry is the granddaughter of Choudhry Bansi Lal, the former chief minister of Haryana, and daughter of politicians Surender Singh and Kiran Choudhry, while Kapil Sibal is Union Minister for Communications and IT as well as for Law and Justice.

Finally, from Union Minister of state for Information and Broadcasting, T Jagatharakshakan from the DMK, whose name popped up in the coalgate scam, saw his assets zoom an astronomical 1,220 percent over the past five years to Rs 73 crore.

For a quick view of the asset increases of the candidates between 2009 and 2014, take a look at this chart below:

Looking at the data, it’s hard to escape from the inevitable conclusion: It pays to be a politician.

ADR analysed the asset details of 396 re-contesting candidates out of a total of 405 candidates.

For more on the data, click on this ADR link.