Poll spend cap forces parties to rely on sr leaders
The glamour quotient mostly from the Bollywood and cricket world would be missing from the ongoing electioneering for the lok Sabha polls, thanks to some strict guidelines by the Election Commission. Major political parties — the Congress and the BJP are banking on their senior leaders and not celebrities for election campaign owing to high expenditure and logistics. The list of star campaigners submitted by the two parties find no mention of celebrities except those contesting the polls or the members of the parties. Electioneering during the Assembly polls in December last year too was a low-key affair with political parties desisting from Bollywood glitz.
The Election Commission has made it clear that if a Bollywood star or a celebrity campaigns for any candidate, the expenditure incurred on the actor/actress will be included in the candidate’s poll expenses.
Further, since each candidate’s expenditure limit has been restricted to `70 lakh in the lok Sabha polls by the ECI, roping in celebrities would prove too expensive for them. It is primarily for this reason that all political parties are banking on campaigns by their senior leaders. While BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is the most sought-after campaigner, other senior leaders like lK Advani, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley are also the party’s star campaigners. For Congress, its president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi are the star campaigners.
The BJP and the Congress have submitted their list of 40 star campaigners for the lok Sabha polls. A comparison of the two lists makes it clear that the BJP has an edge over the Congress as it has more celebrities as its members of candidates than the Congress.
The names include Shatrughan Singh, Hema Malini, Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna, Kirron Kher, Navjot Singh Sidhu and Smriti Irani, among others. However, they are all members of the BJP and some of them even contesting elections.