CHENNAI: If you had marvelled at the many lakhs that must have been spent by politicos in colourfully decking up the walls with party paraphernalia, then here’s some food for thought: Chennai Corporation has spent more than Rs 24 lakh to just remove party symbols and wall posters, in the recently concluded local body elections. The Corporation has said that they had spent the amount whitewashing, scrubbing and cleaning out the party signage only from 100 metres around the polling booths and not throughout the city.The total amount spent on conducting the corporation elections was about Rs 6.5 crore, nearly double the amount of Rs 3.7 crore it spent in 2006. This rise in expenditure could be attributed to the fact that last year, 155 wards across 174 sq km went to polls, while this year, election was held in 200 wards across 426 sq km, following the expansion of city limits. Another reason attributed to the rise includes the direct election of Chennai Mayor, who was earlier elected by indirect voting.The major chunk of the amount spent, understandably, was Rs 3.28 crore for remunerating polling booth officers, about Rs 2 lakh for special officers and Rs 11 lakh remuneration for the officers involved in counting of votes. The new avenue of spending was in videographing the voting process. An RTI filed by V Anbazhagan says that an amount worth Rs 75 lakh was spent on videographing the election process, which was an additional process introduced during this year after a High Court order.Thanks to burgeoning oil prices and the large number of election personnel employed, even the city’s apex body received a huge fuel bill. They spent Rs 53 lakh on rent and fuel charges to conduct elections. They also spent Rs 48.76 lakh on fencing of polling booths. And while going paperless to save trees is the new in thing, environmentalists will be staggered to hear that the corporation spent a huge amount of money in printing voters’ list and polling booth list. Close to Rs 38.88 lakh was spent in this regard.
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