Aug 29, 2024 10:47 PM IST
The Congress party declared that Rahul Gandhi was given ₹70 lakh each to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Wayanad and Raebareli.
The Congress party disclosed to the Election Commission of India (ECI) that its leader Rahul Gandhi was given a total of ₹1.40 crore to contest the Lok Sabha election 2024 from two seats. Gandhi was given ₹70 lakh each for contesting the general elections from Wayanad and Raebareli, the party said.
Rahul Gandhi won from both Wayanad and Raebareli, but ended up retaining his seat in Uttar Pradesh. Bypolls will be conducted in Wayanad soon, and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is the party’s candidate.
Despite being Congress’ star campaigner for the Lok Sabha elections, Rahul Gandhi was not the party leader who got the highest amount to contest the polls. The only Congress candidate to get a higher amount was Vikramaditya Singh, who was given ₹87 lakh from the party fund.
Singh contested the elections from Mandi constituency seat in Himachal Pradesh, but lost the polls to actor-politician Kangana Ranaut from the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Other leaders to get ₹70 lakh included Kishori Lal Sharma, who defeated BJP’s sitting MP Smriti Irani, K C Venugopal (Alappuzha in Kerala) and Manickam Tagore (Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu). Radhakrishna and Vijay Inder Singla – Congress candidates from Gulbarga in Karnataka and Anandpur Sahib in Punjab, respectively – also got ₹70 lakh each.
Read more: What Smriti Irani said on Rahul Gandhi’s ‘changed’ politics, ‘white T-shirt’
Meanwhile, senior party leaders Anand Sharma and Digvijay Singh got ₹46 lakh and ₹50 lakh from the party fund, respectively. However, both lost in the elections.
The Congress party won 99 seats in the Lok Sabha elections 2024, and Rahul Gandhi was appointed as the Leader of Opposition in the lower house.
In January 2022, based on the recommendation of the EC, the government had hiked the election expenditure limit for candidates to ₹95 lakh from ₹70 lakh for Lok Sabha elections and to ₹40 lakh from ₹28 lakh for assembly elections.
For Lok Sabha polls, the revised expenditure limit now stands at ₹90 lakh for bigger states and ₹75 for smaller states.
(With inputs from PTI)
