The Aam Aadmi Party, it seems, is no longer “aam” (common). The newbie party has fielded as many as 44 crorepati candidates against 59 of the Congress, 50 of the BJP and 28 of the BSP for the upcoming Assembly elections.

The AAP, which owes its birth to a campaign for clean politics, also matches its rivals in terms of fielding candidates with criminal cases.

Both the AAP and the BJP are yet to submit their expenditure statements for the last Assembly elections to the Election Commission (EC).

A detailed analysis of the affidavits, submitted by 673 candidates contesting the State elections, by the Association

for Democratic Reforms (ADR) showed that average candidates of the AAP this time were more than twice as rich as they were in the 2013 elections. While the average assets of the AAP had grown from

Rs2.49 crore to Rs5.89 crore, but that of the Congress candidates has declined from Rs14.25 crore to Rs9.60 crore. Even the

average assets of the saffron candidates went down from Rs8.29 crore to Rs7.96 crore.

The Congress leads the list of having the 59 richest candidates — having assets of over Rs1 crore — out of 70. The richest candidate in the fray is Akali Dal’s Manjinder Singh Sirsa having assets to the tune of about Rs239 crore. The second richest is the AAP’s Parmila Tokas having declared assets to the tune of about Rs87 crore. The AAP’s Sat Prakash is the third richest candidate with his assets worth Rs78 crore.

In the list of the top five candidates with incomes more than Rs1 crore a year declared in their Income Tax returns are two from the AAP, and one each from the Akali Dal, the Congress and the BJP. In all, 230 of the 673 candidates in the fray are crorepatis. In the last State polls, 265 of the 796

candidates had assets more than Rs1 crore.

As many as 80 candidates have declared assets less than Rs1 lakh. Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha’s Sushil Kumar, who is contesting from Burari, has declared that he has zero assets. One candidate has declared his assets to the tune of Rs100, another Rs1,300 and third worth Rs1,500.