Congress was out-funded in this election: Jairam Ramesh

NEW DELHI: After the conclusion of what he termed was a "difficult campaign" for the party, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh today said they were "out-funded" by BJP in the wake of the publicity blitzkrieg by Narendra Modi for the Lok Sabha polls.

While Modi's campaign spending had reached an "obscene level" the Congress's expenditure had been mere "peanuts" in comparison, claimed Ramesh, a key strategist of the party.

Ramesh also demanded a "serious expenditure audit" of the money spent by parties in the just-concluded polls.

"This has been a difficult campaign because the Congress has been out-funded by BJP," Ramesh said here.

"The amount of money that the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate (Modi) has spent is astronomical... I think obscene levels of funding. But clearly our level of spending was peanuts compared to what Mr Modi was able to raise," he added.

Congress leaders like Kapil Sibal and Anand Sharma have alleged that BJP spent between Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore on its high-decibel campaign, which was unprecedented in the history of Indian elections.

In an interaction with mediapersons at the Indian Women's Press Corps here, Ramesh also came out with a proposal to check overspending during poll campaigning and suggested abolition of the MP-LAD scheme and using the money to state- fund elections.

A whopping Rs 30,000 crore is estimated to have been spent cumulatively by the government, political parties and candidates in the nine-phased polls which started on April 7 and concluded on May 12.

Referring to the BJP's publicity drive in the print media, Ramesh said that "front page ads in newspapers" given by Modi "will tell you the story -- the amount of money that has been spent".

"Taking a frontpage ad in newspapers is not cheap. Congress didn't take out even one full frontpage ad," he said.