Even as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) fights allegations of taking black money in election funds from fake firms, election expense statements submitted by winning Assembly candidates in Maharashtra compel us to wonder whether political parties, or their candidates, need so much money.

The Maharashtra Election Watch (MEW) and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have observed in a data analysis of the expense statements, that even though candidates constantly claim that the election expenditure limit is very low, 120 MLAs out of 288 (42%) have declared election expenses lower than 50% of the expense limit of Rs 28 lakh.