Ahead of LS polls: AAP candidates take to online crowdfunding to meet poll expenses

NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party candidates of the Lok Sabha election have taken to online crowdfunding to finance their election campaigns, ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. Starting from East Delhi Lok Sabha candidate Atishi to South Delhi candidate Raghav Chadha and latest on the list is Dilip Pandey, the North East Delhi candidate of the AAP.

Within three hours of launch of the campaign on crowdfunding platform www.OurDemocracy.in, over Rs 2 lakh were donated by supporters of the AAP leader Atishi. Party leaders said the campaign will continue online targeting to raise a fund of Rs 70 lakh which is the permissible limit of expenditure in parliamentary polls as per the Election Commission.

Recently a delegation of chartered accountant also came forward to help in finding South Delhi Candidate Raghav Chadha. "South Delhi has immense potential for development but politics of muscle and money power has hindered its progress. Elected MP from South Delhi has not done any work in the past five years. Successive Congress and BJP governments have also neglected the core issues of providing basic amenities since independence," Chadha told the delegation.

The online crowdfunding gained popularity in recent time and in many incidents people took the initiative to collect money. The method has been popular in the field of culture as various filmmakers earlier took the online crowdfunding to make their films. Online crowdfunding, a popular exercise in Europe before elections, was first witnessed in India during the 2017 Manipur Assembly polls. The then anti-AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act) crusader, Irom Sharmila, had resorted to the exercise and collected Rs 4.5 lakh for her party — People's Resurgence and Justice Alliance.

Since then the practice of raising money from people via the Internet has been adopted by a number of politicians. This will, however, be the first time since Lok Sabha polls began in 1952 that candidates in large numbers have resorted to online crowdfunding to meet the expenses of their poll campaigns and send out a message of accountability. Since Independence, several parties, including the Left parties, visited households to seek help, both financial and material, to meet their expenses. With the advent of corporate funding, however, the practice eventually faded out.

Prominent faces who

have opted this are like CPI candidate Kanhaiya Kumar, who is fighting the election from Begusarai in Bihar,

Nana Patole, the Congress candidate from Nagpur, and Mohammed Salim of the CPI(M) from Raiganj seat in West Bengal.