‘Well-wishers’ help hide poll costs

KOLKATA: Walking down College Street, a giant display in support of Trinamool candidate Sadhan Saha catches the eye. It has some interesting names at the bottom — Raju, Patka, Bidyut, Subhas and Manik. The party says these are local youths who have put up the billboard on their own. However, a search for them in Ward 16 drew a blank. None of the residents could recognize them.
It’s the same trend in most city wards. Such billboards have been put up for independent candidate Mohan Kumar Gupta aka “Mana da” at Bhim Ghosh Lane near Bethune College in Ward 17. “Mana da” hasn’t taken names, though. His billboard has been sponsored by the “Bhim Ghosh Lane Pallibashibrinda”, just as “Bijoygarh Adhibashibrinda” has put up flex displays in support of Trinamool candidate Tapan Dasgupta in Ward 96.
This makes it difficult to identify the faceless residents who have “sponsored” the billboards. In Ward 26 an obscure “Amra Onekjan” has sponsored the flex in support of Trinamool candidate Gautam Chattopadhyay.
When asked to explain who make up “Amra Onekjan”, Chattopadhyay pointed to the artisans doing bamboo artwork in a dingy lane in central Kolkata. “They are my sponsors. Some of the billboards have been sponsored by party youths,” Chattopadhyay said. The artisans didn’t even respond when asked about this. The Trinamool candidate told TOI that he has used 70 large flex and 40 smaller ones in his ward.
Prasenjit Basak of Bhim Ghosh Lane, however, came forward to identify himself as one among many who have given money for the campaign of independent candidate Mohan Kumar Gupta. “I am a cancer patient. I have seen Mana da work hard for this ward. I wanted to help him out in some way,” said Basak, adding that local residents collected Rs 10,000 for the candidate’s campaign. Such sponsors are hard to find.
BJP candidate from Ward 72 in Bhowanipore Om Prakash Mishra said he has put up 250 banners of various sizes. “I paid for 50 of them and the rest were sponsored by my well wishers,” Mishra said. The ward is within Bhowanipore assembly segment, where BJP had taken a lead in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
But why is everything so hush hush about sponsors? The reason becomes apparent when you start counting the flex displays, billboards and cut-outs that have flooded the city. According to the state election commission, a candidate in the KMC polls is allowed to spend Rs 6 per person on the voter list. A ward in Kolkata has an average of 20,000 to 30,000 voters, which puts the expenditure ceiling for each candidate at Rs 1.2 lakh to Rs 1.8 lakh.
A survey of the wards along the stretch from Moulali to Esplanade reveals that each candidate has put up around 100 flex displays each (big and small) and countless party flags. When TOI contacted the printers in various localities, they said that one large (8ft x 6ft) display costs around Rs 550, along with the wooden frame. A medium-sized one would cost Rs 450 and the smaller ones at Rs 120 each.
The average cost of these three kinds of display boatds comes to around Rs 340 each, which makes the total cost for such billboards Rs 34,000. Add to this, the cost of building a dais. A medium dais — 20 ft wide, 3 ft high with ladder and rostrum, and a 10ft backdrop — costs around Rs 15,000. Each loudspeaker costs Rs 200 to hire and every chair costs Rs 5.
According to Trinamool insiders, the cost for holding a meeting is at least Rs 30,000 if you cut corners. There are at least four such meetings in each ward, pegging this expense at Rs 1.2 lakh. It goes without saying that the campaign expenditure (Rs 1.2 lakh plus Rs 34,000) apart from the expenditure of the candidate himself overshoots the ceiling.
The obscure sponsors of flex displays and billboards are a means to hide expenses. This had prompted the Election Commission to propose that all such obscure attribution should be counted in the name of the candidate. But the West Bengal State Election Commission doesn’t have the mechanism — enough expenditure observers — to keep a tab on the all expenses, an SEC source said.