Ministers in Congress-ruled states twice as rich as NDA ones
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been
painting the country saffron by forming government in state after state, but
its Cabinets in these states might have some catching up to do for matching the
wealth accumulated by ministers in the Congress-ruled states over the years.
A Business Standard study on the wealth of state ministers in
22 states of India, based on data from Association of Democratic Reforms, shows
that Congress-ruled Cabinets are much wealthier than their National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
counterparts. A look at the declared wealth of ministers in 17 states ruled by
BJP and its allies shows that the total wealth of 310 ministers in these states
stands at Rs 3,032 crore – that translates into average wealth of almost Rs 10
crore per minister.
the total wealth of
five Congress governments in Punjab,
Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Megahalya and Mizoram – a total of 80 ministers –
is Rs 1,732 crore. This is more than half the total wealth of all NDA state
Cabinets, barring Andhra Pradesh. In effect, each Congress state Cabinet is
worth Rs 346 crore, almost thrice as much as the average for NDA-led ones at Rs
178 crore; and, each Congress minister in these five states is worth Rs 22
crore.
Some BJP-ruled states where figures were not clear, such as
Arunachal Pradesh, were kept out of this analysis. Non-NDA, non-Congress states
like Tamil Nadu, Odisha, West Bengal, Kerala, Telangana, Tripura and Delhi were
also kept out of this study. Bihar, where BJP successfully dismembered the
grand alliance and joined the Nitish Kumar Cabinet last month, was included as
an NDA state.

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