9/10 Lok Sabha members from Tamil Nadu are crorepatis, finds ADR analysis

CHENNAI: Nine out of ten candidates in Tamil Nadu who won the recently concluded Lok Sabha election are crorepatis, six of them in the top-50 list of wealthiest MPs and six more in the top-100.

According to the analysis by poll rights body Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), senior DMK leader and State cabinet minister Duraimurugan’s son Kathir Anand, the parliamentarian from Vellore, is in the sixth position in India in terms of declared income, showing Income Tax returns of Rs 12 crore.

However, when it comes to total assets, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram’s son Karti P Chidambaram, the winner from Sivaganga constituency, is the ‘richest’ in Tamil Nadu with assets worth Rs 89 crore, followed by Coimbatore MP Ganapathy Rajkumar P, and Kathir Anand.

Nationally, Karti is ranked 32 in terms of total assets, while Ganapathy is at 34 and Kathir at 35.

The other winners from Tamil Nadu who are in the top-50 are Perambalur MP Arun Nehru of DMK (Rs 81 crore, ranked 38), Ramanathapuram MP K Navaskani of IUML (Rs 76 crore, ranked 41), and Salem MP TM Selvaganapathi of the DMK (Rs 75 crore, ranked 42).

Six others, including Thoothukudi MP and DMK deputy general secretary Kanimozhi and another senior DMK leader TR Baalu, are in the top-100. Incidentally, way below them at number 168 in national ranking is their party colleague Dayanidhi Maran, with a ‘meagre’ Rs 17 crore. His brother Kalanidhi Maran of the Sun Group is among the richest men in India.

In contrast, with assets worth Rs 26 lakh, Sachithanantham R of the CPM, the new MP from Dindigul, has the least in Tamil Nadu (eighth in India).

S Jagathratchakan of the DMK, the businessman-politician who won from Arakkonam, is the second in India when it comes to liabilities – a whopping Rs 649 crore.

However, their wealth is dwarfed by that of their counterparts from other states. The wealthiest Lok Sabha MP in the country now is TDP’s Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani from Andhra Pradesh's Guntur constituency with assets worth Rs 5,705 crore, followed by BJP's Konda Vishweshwar Reddy from Telangana's Chevella with total assets amounting to Rs 4,568 crore, and BJP's Naveen Jindal from Haryana's Kurukshetra with assets worth Rs 1,241 crore.

The ADR analysis said that 504 out of 543 winning candidates are crorepatis. That is, a staggering 93 per cent of the candidates who won the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are crorepatis, up from 88 per cent in 2019. In 2019, 475 (88 per cent) winning candidates were crorepatis and 443 (82 per cent) in 2014.

The study found that 227 (95 per cent) of the BJP's 240 winning candidates, 92 (93 per cent) of the Congress' 99, 21 (95 per cent) of the DMK's 22, 27 (93 per cent) of the TMC's 29 and 34 (92 per cent) of the Samajwadi Party's 37 candidates have declared assets worth more than Rs 1 crore.

All winning candidates of the AAP (3), the JDU (12), and the TDP (16) are crorepatis, ADR data showed.

The average asset worth of the 543 Lok Sabha members is Rs 46 crore. The ruling DMK is in the third position in terms of average assets of winning candidates: its 22 MPs have an average asset of Rs 31.22 crore.

The TDP leads with an average of Rs 442.26 crore per winner, followed by the BJP with Rs 50.04 crore, the DMK with Rs 31.22 crore, the Congress with Rs 22.93 crore, the TMC with Rs 17.98 crore, and the SP with Rs 15.24 crore.

Criminal cases:

When it comes to the 27 Lok Sabha election winners who have declared convicted criminal cases, VS Matheswaran, the DMK candidate who won from Namakkal constituency and DMK's Coimbatore MP Ganapathy are the only ones from Tamil Nadu. They were convicted in one case each, neither of them under serious sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Similarly, the 27 winning candidates have declared attempt to murder charges registered against them. This includes Thol Thirumavalavan, the leader of VCK who won from Chidambaram constituency, with seven cases.

Among the 39 MPs in Tamil Nadu, 26 of them (67 per cent) have declared criminal cases against them – 11 of them with serious cases.