Are the election too expensive for our country: A large amount of money is spent in conducting elections in India. For instance, the government spent about ₹3,500 crores in conducting Lok Sabha elections in 2014. That works out to about ₹40 per person on the voters' list. The amount spent by parties and candidates was more than what the government spent. Roughly speakint, the expenditure made by government, parties and candidates was aroung ₹30,000 crores or ₹500 per voter.

Some people say that elections are a burden on our people, that our poor country cannot afford to hold elections once every five years. Let us compare this expenditure with some other figures:

• In 2005, our government decided to buy six nuclear submarines from France. Each submarine cost about ₹3,000 crores.
• Delhi hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2010. The estimate for its cost is around ₹20,000 crores.