The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) incurred expenses of Rs 529.38 crore in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in the Assembly elections this year, finance documents submitted to the Election Commission reveal.
More than half of the BJP’s reported expenditure (in the five elections) came from West Bengal, with Rs 286.99 crore. The party said it incurred Rs 217.16 crore during the general campaigning and Rs 69.83 crore to candidates and related costs in the state.
In Assam, the BJP says that it spent Rs 96.27 crore, followed by Kerala’s Rs 82.67 crore, Tamil Nadu’s Rs 51.56 crore and Puducherry’s Rs 11.90 crore.
For the Congress, its expenditure in Kerala, through its headquarters and state organisation was at Rs 105.34 crore while the BJP had spent Rs 82.67 crore. The combined expenses of the Congress on general campaigning and on the candidates across the five elections amounted to Rs 143 crore and Rs 105.55 crore, respectively, bringing the total amount of money spent to Rs 248.55 crore.
The case of Tamil Nadu was quite different. Based on the numbers provided in the analysis, the figures include the BJP’s reporting of Rs 51.56 crore in expenditure, and DMK’s figure of Rs 193.70 crore from the state for its own. In Tamilnadu the BJP had won one seat.
The figures cover spending on campaign propaganda as well as spending on campaign-related items such as candidate-related expenditures. The Election Commission no longer requires political parties to file statements of the sum spent during the poll period, but instead, requires them to do so after the elections are over.
Watching the electoral finance statements will give an idea of the amount of money collected by BJP across the different states in the cycle of the 2026 Assembly elections, in terms of which state recorded the highest percentage of the party’s reported expenditure.