India Today has a cover story on India’s richest politicians, compiled in conjunction with empoweringindia.org, an initiative of Liberty Institute, and by god, is it a revealing story?
India’s top-10 richest politicians, compiled on the basis of declarations made to the Election Commission, includes five worthies from Karnataka: strike rate 50%.
Three of them are from the Congress, one each from BJP and JDS.
Anil H. Lad, Congress, Rajya Sabha member: total assets Rs 175 crore
M. Krishnappa, Congress MLA, Vijayanagar: Rs 136 crore
M.A.M. Ramaswamy, JDS RS member: Rs 107.7 crore
Anand Singh, BJP MLA, Vijayanagara: Rs 239 crore
N.A. Harris, Congress MLA, Shanti Nagar: Rs 85.3 crore
Amazingly, out of the 224 MLAs in the current legislative assembly in Karnataka, 116 are crorepatis. Strike rate: 51.7%.
By comparison, 71 out of Andhra Pradesh’s 294 MLs are crorepatis (strike rate: 24.14%), 31 out of Tamil Nadu’s 234 MLAs are crorepatis (strike rate: 13.2%), and only 5 out of Kerala’s 140 MLAs are crorepatis (strike rate: 3.5%).
D.K. Shiva Kumar, Congress MLA, Kanakapura: Rs 75.6 crore
Santosh S. Lad, Congress MLA, Kalghatgi: Rs 75.3 crore
Hemachandra D. Sagar, BJP MLA, Chickpet: Rs 55 crore
Shamanur Shivashankarappa, Congress MLA, Davanagere: Rs 45.3 crore
H.D. Kumaraswamy, JDS MLA, Ramanagaram: Rs 39 crore
N.S. Nandisha Reddy, BJP MLA, K.R. Pura: Rs 36.2 crore
J. Krishna Palemar, BJP MLA, Mangalore City North: Rs 35 crore
***
How is a State, which ranks below the other three southern States on most parameters and human development indices, soaring head and shoulders above the competition in the rich scales?
If these are numbers only for public consumption—to humour the babus of the election commission, as it were—what must the true, unvarnished wealth of the State’s representatives be?
Is the wise voter really concerned with these obscene numbers, beyond their voyeuristic value, that is?
Hopefully, “Operation Kamala” will put an end to this?
Also read: Dabbu dabbu dabbu dot namma election dot com
Everybody is stark naked in the public bathroom
churumuri 
Kudos to Churumuri for highlighting the size of the Kallara Gumpu.
I wrote to the Karnataka Lokayukta requesting a suo motu investigation of Karnataka’s crorepati MLAs. Other readers can too: http://lokayukta.kar.nic.in/contactus.htm
The Karnataka Lokayukta Act of 1986 covers all “members of the state legislature.” See http://www.kar.nic.in/lokayukta/karnataka_lokayukta_act.htm
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@Mysore Peshva:
What good will the Lokayukta do? They will also be bought over. This just makes me sad about the state of affairs. What is worse is there isn’t any prospect of the situation getting any better.
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All I can say is that a greater number of KA politicians have been honest compared to their counterparts in other states.
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becoming wealthy person thro’ hard work, business is not wrong. Neither its wrong for a wealthy person to join politics if its not to pursue own business interest.
The list above is incomplete. There are many politicians who have more wealth but its buried under different name, business.
Look at Maran Family in TN who made few billions (pre-crash) using political contacts.
How Jyoti Basu’s son Chandan became multi billionaire in a matter of few years?
YSR’s son invested 500-600 crore in media- how he got the money?
Much corruption goes under the radar- like Govt jobs, flats sanctioned to relatives of Party leaders. Land puchased benami etc etc..
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Funny but, these MLAs’ most part of the “declared” wealth are actually the value of the ancestral or long acquired properties which they have no inclination to alienate!
The real wealth is unaccounted and undetectable easily!
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I agree with Mysore Peshva. Thank you Sir.
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“How is a State, which ranks below the other three southern States on most parameters and human development indices”
Where is our Simple when we need him/her most ? :)
Looks like what Simple kept on saying about Karnataka being ahead of everything fell on Churumuri’s deaf ears ;)
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if you look at undeclared assets, no one can beat deve gowda and co. probably, even yediyurappa/bangarappa will be there.
recently, swissbank reported that 1.6 trillion dollars of assets held in swissbank belongs to indians.
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=137213
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“recently, swissbank reported that 1.6 trillion dollars of assets held in swissbank belongs to indians.”
Mind boggling. The amount of money mentioned here is MORE THAN THE GDP of India. Just imagine (dream), if all this money is brought into the country, India can develop infrastructure superior to all European countries, leaving China far far behind!
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Bihar.. of…. oh… no….i wont , again!
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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Swiss-bank-secrecy-threatened-rb-14412207.html
Now what are the chances that India would try to get this (Indian accounts estimated to be in excess of $1Trillion) information ?
Just joking… we all know how we dealt with the information from Sweden’s investigation into the Bofors Deal!
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sriranga not fair to throw in yeddy there.PLease understand that is great info that you provided.But congress has ruled for 95 % of the time.VP singh bangarappa and gowda and gujral and laloo and mulayam and karunanidhi are all part of the same dynastic corrupt me and my blod generations gene..
ONly the bjp has produced non corrupt bachelors like modi and atal.Every party needs funds thanks to indira gandhi’s 1969 law.She also excused corruption by calling it a glbal thing.Tehelka trapped bangaru by saying this is for your party campaign funds.
So bjp cannot be balmed for needing money to fight its war against the evil congress hwo has used this money to buy the ec chawla.the media the president whose brothers are loan defaulters .
Recently media spread a rumor that yeddy’s son was contesting.Yeddy
proved that this was false and said it is against bjp culture.Last time the partsan media spred similar falsehood against venkiah naidu in AP.Any media can be bought by congress.
Atleast use your brains to analyze the difference between a small time bangaru who showed a receipt and was trapped by the fraud pro-congress tehelka (of global first sharma sebi banned him fame and the kapildev fraud prabhakar fame).And the mother and fountainhead of corruption congress .Otherwise you are just saying that someone who gets one qs wrong on an exam is as bad as some one who gets 99 qs wrong out of 100 total qs.
bjp is the only hope.It is far better than quatrochi congress .Bjp may have one snake or a few.But in congress you are rquired to be a snake to even be admitted to it.
THat swissbank figure is thanks to the great 55 yr rule of the congress.
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Sandesh
Don’t confuse issues.
1. When I spoke about Karnataka’s eminence in various fields, corruption was never one of the points discussed.
2. I never said Karnataka is better than other states in corruption.
3. Neither did you bring up the issue of corruption.
So think before you blurt, belch and burp.
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HDK’s wealth must now be short by about Rs.3.75 crores, after being seized by IT department.
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“How is a State, which ranks below the other three southern States on most parameters and human development indices, soaring head and shoulders above the competition in the rich scales?”
Look at these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_India_by_size_of_economy
Karnataka is not the last ( compared to other 3 Southern states)as intended but second only to TN in terms of GDP Per Capita and also noty far behind.
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We need to be careful about how we read this data. There is no doubt that by default our politicians are corrupt, but some might have used this opportunity (contacts) to build businesses who might feed others. Few of these might have already been rich even before entering politics (ex: businessmen turned politicians). What we need to look at is the delta in their assets before and after entering politics.
I agree to Pommu’s comment on GDP Per capita. Karnataka is a close second to TN.
Lokayukta can only be as good as the honesty of the officers. Media and blogs like these would eventually help curb the corruption. Media in India is more interested in sensational news rather than address issues like these.
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No comments on this……….
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