Expenditure for Mizoram Assembly polls up by over 40 per cent

Aizawl: The expenditure for the elections to the 40-member Mizoram legislative Assembly to be held on November 25 was estimated at Rs 24.30 crore and was the highest ever expenses in the history of the state elections. State Election department officials said the expenses in the last Assembly elections held in 2008 was Rs 14.55 crore and the increase was 40.11 per cent. If the expenditure for the coming Assembly elections is at 24.30 crore, the average expenditure in an Assembly segment would be Rs 60.75 lakh while an average Rs 33.33 lakh was spent for each seat of the 60 seats in the last Tripura Assembly polls held on February 14 last, officials said. A professor in the Political Science department of the Mizoram University said "If people use elections to elect bad governments, then elections are not only expensive, but disastrous for the state exchequer as well as for the people on the whole."