Podcast | Top Karnataka politicians and their ever-growing riches

Pyaar kiyaa toh darna kyaa? Pyaar kiyaa, koi chori nahin; chhup chhup aahe bharnaa kyaa, used to be the rallying call for rebel lovers everywhere. Key point there being, it was love and not thievery. And if you have it – love that is – you flaunt it. But that was 1960. Come 2018, people have changed. So have social mores. And so has polity. In an era when the likes of Donald Trump have gone on to say, without any blowback, that even if he shot someone dead in the middle of Fifth Avenue, his supporters would still vote for him, it appears we find ourselves firmly in the middle of the Brazen Politician Era. Which is why it should not come as a surprise that Karnataka politicians hold crores and crores in their bank accounts and are not bharo-ing aahein chhup chhupke. Could they be even richer than they have declared? Well golly, I don’t know! They are politicians. Don’t you know – they never lie?

Welcome to yet another edition of Story of the Day right here on Moneycontrol and in our continuing coverage of the lead up to the Karnataka election, today we cast a spotlight on all the money we can see, and perhaps some hidden on the dark side of the moon.

Karnataka Politicians – Show Me The Money

There is a saying in Kannada – duDDey doDDappa; vidye avarappa. Money is the big daddy; but education is THAT big daddy’s daddy. But you see, in these days of terribly short attention spans, and 160-character wisdom, we in Karnataka have clearly forgotten the other half of the saying. No wonder then that we do not have a spate of PhDs filing their nomination papers. What we do have are people with another kind of PhD clogging the scene – people with Pretty Huge duDDu. duDDu, that’s your word of the day. Money. Well, might as well be your word of the year. Why? Money makes the world go round. Was it love? Probably not. So here I am, trying to, in the immortal words of Cuba Gooding Jr, Show You The Money of Karnataka politicians.

Writing for Moneycontrol today, Ramakrishna Upadhya, confirms to us a truism we have known and endured – politics is the most lucrative and perhaps the most unregulated business in the country. You retire in any other profession – medicine, law, or even the highly overpaid actual-lying business of acting – and you expect to take a pay cut. Defying even this rule is politics. Even those who have not been in power in the last five or ten years have revealed spectacular growth in their incomes, strengthening the fact that once you are in politics the wealth graph can only keep going up.

Listen in to how rich some of the top Karnataka politicians are and how they could be even richer…

We start with DK Shivakumar. Your humble politician.

Filing his papers from Kanakapura – a mere 55 km away from Bangalore – Shivakumar also clearly declared he is never far away from a bank. Or a jeweler. Or a property he could buy. Or his daughter, who has grown richer by a hundred crores in about five years. In 2013, the daughter of Shivakumar – Aishwarya – had wealth of 1.09 crores. Cut to five years later, it is 108! Aishwarya is living up to her name. Or at least Shivakumar is ensuring that the name he gave her oh-so-subtly, must mean he must also give her, her name’s worth, you know what I mean. What a giving father.

My father gave stuff to me too.

Once he gave me an orange.

Because he couldn’t peel it.

I peeled it for him.

He ate it.

And he told me it was rich in Vitamin C.

And that he would never get scurvy.

As a result of this exchange, I too gained wealth.

Of knowledge.

Not, I repeat, 108 crores.

DK Shivakumar, Karnataka’s energy minister submitted a 94-page affidavit about his assets, liabilities and two cases, which include recent charges of evading income tax, giving false information and being involved in economic offences. Wonder how that transpired. In 2013, Shivakumar declared a personal wealth of 215 crore rupees. His wife, Usha, had declared 35 crore rupees in assets. And daughter, Aishwarya, was a newbie in the crorepati bracket, with 1.09 crores. Five years have served the Shivakumars well. DeeKayShi now has assets well over 619 crore rupees, an increase of 188%. His wife Usha is richer by 77 crores. And his daughter is in the coveted 100 crore rupee club – Yash Raj, eat your heart out.

Wife and children together have accrued wealth well over 472% since the last election. They must be very good at what they do. And what do they do? Well, Usha is a housewife and a landlady. And Shivakumar, in addition to being energy minister, declares himself an educationist and social worker. You know – big money jobs. I have an educationist friend too! She got herself a PhD from Harvard. And she really wants to bring about a change in the system at the grassroots level. You know, not unlike a social worker. She lives in a shared house with three other people and takes the metro to work. And counts every rupee. It helps, I guess, that she does not have too many to count anyway. Clearly she is doing something wrong – I mean, just look at humble educationist and social worker DK Shivakumar! Harvard Sharvard. What use?

In August, the Income Tax Department had raided the properties of Shivakumar in Bengaluru, Kanakapura, Mysuru and New Delhi in a case of tax evasion.

During the raids, investigators are believed to have recovered more than Rs 300 crore in undisclosed income and cash and jewellery worth nearly Rs 15 crore, unidentified officials in the department had said in August. Shivakumar was hosting several Gujarat Congress MLAs at a Bangalore resort at the time of the raids. The Congress had sent them to the lodge allegedly to stop them from being poached by the Bharatiya Janata Party before the Rajya Sabha polls held on August 8.

And how did DK Shivakumar react to all this? Coolly, that’s how. "I welcome an investigation, they, that is the BJP, are already using their might to create problems for me. As far as my assets are concerned, there is nothing new. The column (in the Election Commission form) asked for the present market value of properties and that is how the number went up," Shivakumar went on to say.

From supplying milk door to door to running a tent cinema, DKSHi has certainly come a long way. He was won five assembly elections as a Congress member, and been a minister several times. Whether in or out of power, he has used his shrewd business acumen to get into granite quarrying, iron ore export, land deals, education and real estate business among others.

Of course, there have been tax raids and questions asked by pesky reporters and annoying podcasters. Clearly, Brazen Politician DK Shivakumar could not give a flying fig.

Next, we move on to the Chief Minister club. In Karnataka, many people want to join this club, the waiting period is loooong, and there is every possibility that you may get kicked out sooner than you thought, but clearly there seem to be perks. We start with the current one – mythbusting Siddaramaiah, who has managed to actually, miraculously enough, come to complete his five year term. Well, almost. Who knows what might happen before the 12th of May! How does Siddaramaiah bank account look? Not shabby. While the chief minister revealed assets worth a modest Rs 18.55 crore as against Rs 7.65 crore in 2013, his son, S Yatheendra, who is contesting for the first time from Varuna, declared assets worth Rs 23.80 crore and liabilities of Rs 8.77 crore.

Yeddyurappa next, also of the CM Club. Looking at the affidavits that BSY filed for the 2013, 2014 and 2018 elections, one would realize that not only has he declared far fewer assets this time, he also seems to have shed several criminal cases he had in his name. Yeddyurappa had 34 cases at a time while most of them were related to the Prevention of Corruption Act. This came down to 16 cases in 2014 and by 2018, Yeddy is just left with three cases — one related to corruption (criminal misconduct, breach of trust, forgery and cheating), two others relating to election violations during a by-poll last year. With great power, comes great responsibility. With a drop in power, comes a drop in wealth too. This is not always the case when it comes to Indian politics, as we have seen. But it seems to be the case with Yeddy-O. On Thursday, he declared cumulative assets of Rs 4.09 crore while he was worth Rs 5.8 crore in 2013 and Rs 6.9 crore in 2014. Both his movable and immovable assets have gone down over the past four years while his liabilities have also decreased considerably. Lawyer fees? Humility? Who can ever really tell.

And there are clearly some changes in his CV too. In 2013, he claimed he had a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bangalore University. That changed to having just a PUC qualification come 2014. In 2018, it remains a PUC, but he bothers to tell us all that the college was affiliated to Mysore University okay? Politicians. They are just like us. Lying on CVs. But the only difference? We get caught.

Rounding up the last of the CM aspirants, HD Kumaraswamy. Him of the Dr Rajkumar love. Him of the political ups and downs with some backstabbing thrown for good measure. As the per the election affidavits submitted by ex-Prime Minister Deve Gowda’s son Kumaraswamy, his movable and immovable assets amount to Rs 43 crore, up from the Rs 16 crore he had declared in 2013.

In the affidavit, Kumaraswamy’s wife declared assets worth Rs 124 crore, an over Rs 20 crore increase from 2013. The JD(S) state chief and his wife declared liabilities worth Rs 2.9 crore and Rs 8.1 crore, respectively.

This makes HD the richest chief ministerial aspirant in 2018. But is he the richest aspirant in general? No, because well, we already spoke of DK Shivakumar. But is DKShi the richest one this time around? Nope. Who then? We’ll find out.

Congress candidate MBT Nagaraj is rich as all hell, and is not afraid to let you know. How rich? Super rich. Contesting from Hosakote on the outskirts of Bengaluru, he has declared assets worth Rs 1,015 crore, up from Rs 545 crore last time. Nagaraj, a close associate of Siddaramaiah, claims that he is a “real estate businessman.” JD(S)’ Iqbal Huttur, a mining contractor, contesting for the first time from Bellary city, has declared assets worth Rs 590 crore. Another mining baron Anand Singh, contesting on behalf of Congress has declared assets worth Rs 125 crore.

What does campaign finance law have to say about this? And are there penalties to be paid for misinformation? Yes. But there are some aspects of it which clearly seem like there needs to be more work put in. Let’s see what the rules say. The candidates’ declaring of assets and liabilities, educational qualification and criminal cases being faced by them through affidavits was made mandatory only in May 2002 following a direction from the Supreme Court.

As Upadhya goes on to note writing for Moneycontrol, the returning officer has the power to reject the nomination papers if any of the affidavits are found to be containing false or inadequate information, but the gap between the last day of nominations and the scrutiny is so little that he/she hardly has any time go through all of them. Hence, the rejection of nominations at this stage is extremely rare and in case of any doubts, the candidates can be taken to court only after the results.

Besides, and perhaps more crucially, as per existing law, under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act (RPA), the punishment for filing of a false affidavit is only six months of imprisonment or fine or both.

The Law Commission headed by retired Supreme Court judge AP Shah had informed the Supreme Court – after the court had sought its opinion – that the filing of false affidavit was “rampant” and “it can only be curbed if the punishment for the offence is enhanced to two years’ prison term from the present six months and the person disqualified from (future) elections.”

Intermittently, there have been small efforts made by the Election Commission and the Income Tax department to tackle the menace of unaccounted money influencing the electoral outcome.

Before the 2010 Bihar assembly elections, the Election Commission wrote to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to match the statements of assets and liabilities filed by all candidates with their income tax returns. Grumbling about the volume of work involved, all that the CBDT came up with was 10 cases of “wrong PAN numbers being used by candidates.”

In January 2014, the Election Commission had organised another joint meeting with CBDT where it was decided that the EC would sort out the affidavits into different categories and present CBDT with material in a format that would be easy to scrutinise. It has been almost four years since the last Lok Sabha elections and whether anything has come out of that exercise is not known.

The Election Commission had also recommended to the Centre in February 2011 to amend Section 125A of the RPA and enhance punishment for filing false affidavits to two years imprisonment “which is the minimum sentence required for attracting disqualification under Section 8A of the electoral Act.” Both the then UPA and the present NDA governments have remained silent regarding the EC’s recommendation.

The Supreme Court is currently seized of a number of PILs filed by voluntary organisations like Association for Democratic Reforms and the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties urging automatic disqualification of candidates with criminal records, enhancement of punishment for filing false affidavits and so on. As late as September 7, 2017, the Election Commission reiterated its stand before the court that filing of false affidavits should be made grounds for disqualification.

As there is little chance of politicians acting in public interest, the only hope lies with the Supreme Court.

But until then, we can only watch in shock and awe as we tumble along in the era of the brazen politician where rules you and I abide by, simply do not apply.

Thank you for joining us on this story of the day on Moneycontrol where we have attempted to show you the money of Karnataka politicians. Well, at least the money they have shown the EC. Should there be better campaign finance laws? Yes. Are they underserving the voting electorate? Yes. Are politicians getting away from egregious crimes and wrongful submissions? Yes. Is this an old old story that we have so grown tired of that it does not even register as wrong? Yes. But is there going to be really any change that we can see in our lifetimes? Your guess is as good as mine.

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