Netas rope in CAs to do expense number crunching

Instead of celebrating their win in the Mumbai civic polls and getting to the job on hand, most corporators are busy working 24x7 with their chartered accountants and finance managers to set their accounts in order.

The state election commission had hiked the expense limit for candidates for the civic polls from Rs1.35 lakh to Rs5 lakh.

As the commission’s directive, each of the 2,232 candidates had to file his or her account of expenses every day.

“The last day of submission of accounts was February 17. But, as most of the candidates have still not filed their expenses, the date has been extended until March 17,” said an official from the election department.

Now, if any candidate misses the extended deadline, the returning officer or ward officer can file a first information report against him or her.

A senior corporator, who won the civic polls for the third consecutive time, said it is impractical to keep the election expenses limited to Rs5 lakh. “It doesn’t even cover the printing expenses for the campaigning. Also, we have to give the party workers some incentive as they work 24x7 for us. Many of them take leave without pay from their work places” he pointed out.

Another winning corporator said: “I tried getting to the right figure on the accounts book with my accountant, but failed. Now, I am consulting a chartered accountant to juggle with the numbers.”

Though many of the winning candidates have seen their seniors manage funds in the earlier civic polls, they now realise how difficult it the task is.

“We were worried about the accounts book while spending the money, but didn’t realise it was this difficult,” admitted a corporator from the western suburbs who had spent over Rs80 lakh to win the civic elections.

While winning candidates still have a reason to play with the numbers, those who had borrowed money to fund the campaigning and have lost are reeling under the pressure of repaying the loans and releasing their mortgaged properties.