Expenses Of Political Parties

BJP emerges as largest advertiser so far in 2024

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition seeking a direction to fix the limit of expenses by political parties and candidates in elections, saying these are matters of legislative policy. "Either these are legislative changes or policy matters. How can we entertain a petition like this," a bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud observed. The bench was hearing a plea filed by a Haryana-based man seeking several directions, including to calculate and fix the limit of expenses by political parties and candidates, restrict the expenditure on articles printed and posted prior to nominations and calculate expenses of rallies performed during filing of nomination. "These are all matters of legislative policy," said the bench, also comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. The plea had also sought a direction to all the high courts to decide election petitions within six months. "These are not matters on which we can merely give directions. There is already a law..

The Centre has changed the category of the land allotted to political parties for their offices in Delhi from 'institutional' to government-to-government' transfer, which will significantly bring down the dues. The government approved the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry's proposal in this regard earlier this month, they said. The land rates under the 'government-to-government' category are cheaper than the 'institutional' rates. The latest change is likely to benefit 14 political parties which were allotted land between 2000 and 2017, they said. However, there was no official word from the ministry on the same. According to the sources, the 14 political parties, including the BJP, Congress and Janata Dal (United), together owed around Rs 150 crore in land dues to the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry. After the change in allotment category, it is learnt the BJP will owe around Rs 17 crore to the ministry while the Congress may get Rs 27 lakh from the government as

The BJP also said that a political party's campaign encourages and influences voters to participate in elections.