NEW DELHI: One of the 54 re-contesting Tripura MLAs’ assets increased by a staggering 61,165 per cent, an Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) report revealed on Friday. BJP candidate from Karamchara, Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl, has declared assets worth Rs 41.02 lakh. He contested the 2013 polls on a Congress ticket and had declared assets of Rs 6,697 then.
The report comes on a day when the Supreme Court took a strict view of the exponential increase in the candidates’ assets. The apex court also directed the candidates to declare the source of their incomes and that of their spouses and dependants.
The report also reveals that the 54 MLAs’ assets have grown by around 47 per cent from Rs 54.8 lakh in 2013 to Rs 80.4 lakh in 2018.
CPI(M) leads the party-wise statistics of average asset increase of re-contesting MLAs. The seven re-contesting legislators of the BJP have recorded an average increase of 43 per cent while the worth of the 44 CPI(M) MLAs has grown by 50.96 per cent. The two re-contesting Congress MLAs have declared an increase of 50.09 per cent in their assets, while the lone re-contesting CPI MLA has recorded a 14.64 per cent rise.
The top-three legislators with highest rise in their assets also come from the BJP. Biswabandhu Sen, contesting from Dharmanagar, has declared an increase of Rs 2 crore and tops the list. Sen is followed by BJP’s Sudip Roy Barman with a Rs 1.57 crore increase in assets, while Radhakishorpur candidate Paranjit Singha Roy has declared an increase of Rs 1.38 crore.