News Karnataka-Udupi

Bangalore: Nandan Nilekani, the Congress candidate from Bangalore South  and former chief of UIDAI  who has declared assets worth Rs 7,710 crore in his affidavit filed before the Election Commission is the richest candidate in Karnataka as also in India.

Of the 432 candidates in the fray for the Lok Sabha elections in 28 constituencies of Karnataka, 118 are crorepatis. This accounts to 27 per cent of the candidates. Of these, the Congress has 27, the BJP has 26 candidates, the JD (S) has 21 while  12 are from the AAP.

Among major parties, the average assets of the 28 Congress candidates is Rs 293.75 crore. The 25 JD (S) candidates have average assets of Rs 30.40 crore, while the average assets of 28 BJP candidates is  Rs 14.65 crore. The average assets of 28 AAP candidates stands at Rs 8.49 crore.

The second richest candidate in Karnataka after Nilekani is R Prabhakara Reddy, the Janata Dal (S) candidate from Bangalore Rural, who has declared total assets of Rs 224 crores. V Balakrishnan, former director of Infosys and AAP candidate from Bangalore Central Constituency stands third with  an asset size of Rs 189 crore.

 Of the total 177 candidates, 432 have declared their income tax  details. Of these, 22 have declared a total income of more than Rs 50 lakh, while Nilekani has declared his highest total annual income at Rs 168.41 crore, followed by Manju A of the Congress from Hassan with income of Rs 14.04 crore and R Prabhakara Reddy of the JD (S) with a total income of Rs 3.91 crore.