Dangers of raising poll spending limit!

New Delhi: The Election Commission has increased the limit of election expenditure ahead of the assembly elections to be held in five states.

Now in big states, the candidate of Lok Sabha will be able to spend Rs 90 lakh and the candidate of Vidhan Sabha will be able to spend Rs40 lakh.

For small states, the expenditure limit in the Lok Sabha polls will be Rs75 lakh and in the Vidhan Sabha it will be Rs28 lakh.

But this beckons a question as to why has the Election Commission thought of increasing the expenditure limit of a Lok Sabha candidate from Rs70 to 90 lakh?

For the last two years, the national income of the country has been stagnated or is negative. The income of the common people has decreased instead of increasing.

Then by what logic has the election expenditure limit been increased at this time?

The old Rs70 lakh limit was also a lot, but raising it to Rs90 lakh will further reduce the chances of common people contesting elections.

Shouldn’t the Election Commission take measures to keep that expenditure within a limit? And if the expenditure limit is being increased, shouldn’t the government or the Commission take measures to provide for contesting elections to ensure a level playing field for all?

Has the Election Commission noticed that election expenditure has increased or people are spending a lot in elections, so the limit on election expenditure should be increased?

Or has the Commission seen the figure that now more crorepatis have started reaching the Lok Sabha than before, so the limit of election expenditure should be increased?

Many organisations have assessed that the chances of winning the election of crorepati candidates are many times higher than that of candidates from the lower strata of financial background.

Therefore, the Commission should stop this, or else the Parliament will become a club of millionaires and billionaires, where they will make policies for the trillionaires and not for the common people.