Actor and politician M Mukesh.
Credit: Facebook/@mukeshcineactor
New Delhi: CPI(M) gave M Mukesh, an actor-turned-MLA in Kerala who is presently in the eye of a controversy after a cine artiste accused him of sexual crime, Rs 79 lakh to fight the Lok Sabha elections, the highest for a Left party candidate in the country.
The 'Part Election Expenditure Statement' submitted by the CPI(M) showed that none of the four winning CPI(M) candidates got what Mukesh managed from the party for the campaign. R Sachithanantham, who won from Tamil Nadu's Dindigul, was the closest to Mukesh in terms of getting funds directly from the party at Rs 70.63 lakh.
Another winner from Tamil Nadu, S Venkatesan, who won from Madurai, got Rs 36.99 lakh while Amra Ram, who won from Rajasthan's Sikar got only Rs 10 lakh. Alathur MP and CPI(M)'s Lok Sabha leader K Radhakrishnan, the former Kerala Minister who is the only winner from Kerala, got Rs 37.40 lakh from the party.
Despite the CPI(M) flexing its financial muscles for his campaign, Mukesh did not manage to defeat his rival RSP's NK Premachandran. In Kerala, the candidate to get the second highest funding from the party – Rs 49 lakh – was V Joy in Thiruvananthapuram.
A two-term MLA, Mukesh had ran into trouble after a young actress accused him of sexual assault following the publication of Justice Hema Committee report, which examined various issues in Malayalam film industry. Several other film personalities are also facing allegations and police has registered cases of rape and sexual harassment against them, including Mukesh.
For Lok Sabha elections, the election expenses ceiling for candidates is Rs 95 lakh for all states except Arunachal Pradesh, Goa and Sikkim, whose ceiling is set at Rs 75 lakh. Among union territories, the ceiling is Rs 95 lakh in Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir while it is Rs 75 lakh for the rest.
Altogether, CPI(M) gave Rs 4.12 crore to its candidates in Kerala while it was Rs 2.21 crore in West Bengal and Rs 1.07 crore in Tamil Nadu. In Karnataka, CPI(M) gave its Chikkaballapur candidate MP Munivenkatappa Rs 16.40 lakh.
When it comes to CPI, the party gave Rs 10 lakh to Annie Raja for campaign in Wayanad where she unsuccessfully took on top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. The party did not give money to its three other candidates in the state.
One of the two CPI winners K Subbarayan, who represents Tirupur, was given Rs 60 lakh for his campaign. However, the records did not show any transfer to V Selvaraj, the party’s second MP from Nagapattinam.