Calculating assets of politicians is difficult

Calculating the wealth of our politicians is far from easy. Firstly, it’s virtually impossible to collect information for all the 8,070 candidates who contested this Lok Sabha election, reports The Mint.

Calculating the wealth of our politicians is far from easy. Firstly, it’s virtually impossible to collect information for all the 8,070 candidates who contested this Lok Sabha election.

When Empowering India, an online initiative of New Delhi’s Liberty Institute, tried to compile this data, the organization found that there were about 470 candidates whose affidavits were not yet available on the various election offices’ websites.

Another 400 or so candidates had filed affidavits that were illegible or incomplete. Some of these didn’t declare any assets at all.

Check the "Assets Arithmetic"

But even if you leave out these 800+ affidavits, before calculating the average assets of our politicians, one thing is clear: Our politicians’ wealth points only one way—up.

Read the full story here.