Parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju on Friday criticised the practice of “winning elections by distributing money” and lauded Bengal for the absence of such a tradition.
“Democracy is broadly the same, whether in West Bengal, Odisha or Delhi. However, at the local level, there are certain differences in its character and functioning,” Rijiju said.
“One positive aspect of West Bengal is that the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections have traditionally required fewer resources and less money.”
The BJP minister from Arunachal Pradesh, who made it clear he was speaking of a time that coincided with his “early years” in politics, seemed to base his claim on his conversations with Left Front MPs as a young parliamentarian. Rijiju first became MP in 2004.
“In the early years, many communist MPs were elected from West Bengal. Most of them belonged to the Left Front. I once asked the Left Front MPs how much it cost to win an election in West Bengal,” Rijiju, also the Union minority affairs minister, said.
“They said it used to cost only ₹5,000, ₹6,000, or at most ₹10,000, mainly for tea and refreshments. They did not distribute money to voters.”
He added: “However, in some parts of India, voters accept money during elections. We need to consider how to end this practice seriously. Winning elections by distributing money is not the right way.”
Rijiju was addressing Bengal’s newly elected MLAs at the inaugural session of a two-day orientation programme organised jointly by the Assembly and the Parliamentary Research and Training Institute for Democracies in New Town.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chair Harivansh, chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, and Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose addressed the gathering along with several outstation speakers.
Sujan Chakraborty of the CPM, who was MP from 2004 to 2009, corroborated Rijiju’s statement.
Referring to their interactions in Parliament, he said Rijiju and several other MPs had been surprised to learn that elections in Bengal did not require huge sums of money, unlike many other states.
“Rijiju was always very friendly and would come to chat with us during breaks in Parliament. He had asked me and other MPs about the cost of elections in our state and was visibly surprised to know that we didn’t need crores of rupees to win an election,” Chakraborty, a member of the CPM’s central committee, said.
“We were equally surprised to hear many MPs say that they had to spend crores of rupees to contest or win elections in different states.”
Chakraborty, however, suggested that the culture Rijiju had praised no longer existed in Bengal, at least since the Trinamool Congress came to power in 2011.
Chakraborty said: “Trinamool has completely destroyed the political culture over the past 15 years. They not only introduced the use of money to buy votes but also turned politics into a profession for earning unlimited wealth.”
He added: “The BJP is not free from such allegations, either, and in Bengal, too, it has adopted a similar model in different ways.”
Several Trinamool leaders have been arrested on corruption charges in recent years, with the alleged seizure of large amounts of cash from them.
Parties such as the CPM, Congress and the BJP have accused Trinamool of spending part of its allegedly ill-gotten money during elections to hire goons, manipulate voting and intimidate voters.
During its 34-year rule, the CPM-led Left Front too faced allegations of electoral malpractices such as “booth-capturing”, “booth-jamming”, voter intimidation and “scientific rigging”.
Rijiju’s party has been accused of distributing money during elections in different states, including Kerala and Maharashtra.
Hours before polling began for the Maharashtra Assembly elections of November 2024, the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi had charged BJP candidate Rajan Naik with distributing cash at a hotel in Virar, Palghar.
During the 2024 general election, Left leaders in Kerala had complained that BJP workers were distributing ₹500 notes among voters at a colony in the Thrissur constituency, prompting the district collector to order an inquiry.
In his speech, Rijiju suggested that elected representatives in India had a harder life than their Western counterparts.
“The population in each constituency is relatively small there. In contrast, an MLA’s constituency in India has around 300,000 people,” he said.
“From morning till night, people come with complaints related to healthcare, drinking water, education and numerous civic issues.”
Rijiju added: “The life of an elected representative in the Western countries is vastly different from that of an elected representative in India. In our country, being an MLA or an MP is by no means an easy or comfortable job.”