New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is the richest CM in India while his West Bengal counterpart, Mamata Banerjee, has the least net assets.
These are some of the facts that stood out during ThePrint’s analysis of the last election affidavits of the country’s 30 chief ministers.
The analysis threw up some other interesting information too. For example, Assam’s Himanta Biswa Sarma is the most educated chief minister in this country and eight CMs own firearms.
The analysis also showed that Sikkim Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang-Golay has three wives.
Here’s a closer look at India’s 30 chief ministers, all through their election affidavits.
Also Read: All parties in Punjab talk ‘aam aadmi’, but field crorepatis — 93% for SAD, 91% Congress, 69% AAP
Who’s the richest of them all?
Jagan Reddy’s assets stand at Rs 370 crore — more than those of all the other CMs combined — the affidavits show. This includes the assets he inherited as well as those acquired.
The only other chief minister with assets worth more than Rs 100 crore is Arunachal Pradesh’s Pema Khandu. His net assets stand at Rs 132 crore.
The cumulative assets of all eight northeastern chief ministers (Rs 178.85), in fact, are a little more than those of all the other CMs — barring Reddy— combined (Rs 178,49), the election affidavits show.
Banerjee is the poorest chief minister, with assets worth Rs 15 lakh, while Bihar CM Nitish Kumar follows at Rs 56 lakh.
The only other chief minister with assets under Rs 1 crore is Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan (Rs 73 lakh).
CMs with firearms
Eight CMs — Tamang, Eknath Shinde, Adityanath, Hemant Soren, Pushkar Singh Dhami, N. Biren Singh, Bhagwant Mann, and Shivraj Singh Chouhan — own firearms.
Sikkim CM Tamang owns a bore revolver worth Rs 3 lakh — the most expensive weapon on this list. Maharashtra’s Eknath Shinde owns a revolver and a pistol that together cost Rs 5 lakh.
Apart from him, Uttar Pradesh’s Yogi Adityanath is the only other chief minister to list two weapons — a revolver and a rifle.
Other rifle-owning CMs on the list are Jharkhand’s Soren and Uttarakhand’s Dhami.
Apart from these, three chief ministers own weapons — Manipur’s Biren Singh (a pistol worth Rs 1.75 lakh), Punjab’s Mann (a gun worth Rs 20,000), and Madhya Pradesh’s Chouhan (a Rs 5,500 revolver).
Richer spouses
‘Business’ appears to be the most popular choice of occupation among chief ministers’ spouses — the election affidavits show a dozen partners engaged in some kind of enterprise.
Moreover, the spouses of six chief ministers — among them Sarma, Soren, Chouhan, and Shinde — are richer than their husbands.
The Assam CM’s wife, Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, who’s listed as “chairman-cum-managing director” of Pride East Entertainment Pvt Ltd media company, holds assets worth Rs 11 crore against her husband’s Rs 1 crore.
Soren is worth Rs 2.24 crore while his wife Kalpana has Rs 5.81 crore worth of assets to her name.
Likewise, Chouhan’s net assets come to Rs 2.6 crore against his spouse Sadhna Singh’s Rs 3.9 crore.
Both Soren’s and Singh’s wives are involved in “businesses”, according to their election affidavits.
Like her husband, Maharashtra CM Shinde’s wife Lata Shinde is a construction “contractor” whose net assets come to Rs 5.5 crore. Shinde, meanwhile, holds assets worth Rs 2.24 crore.
Five of the 30 CMs — Haryana’s Manohar Lal Khattar, Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik, UP’s Adityanath, and Puducherry’s N. Rangaswamy, and West Bengal’s Banerjee — are unmarried, the affidavits show.
However, of the 30 CMs, Sikkim’s Tamang stands out as being the only one to have multiple wives. All three of his wives are government employees.
Also Read: BJP, SP lead Rs 100 crore club this UP election, ex-journalist, ‘nawab’ among richest candidates
Most criminal cases
At 64, Telangana’s K. Chandrashekar Rao, or KCR, has the most criminal cases.
Two of his southern counterparts — Tamil Nadu’s M.K. Stalin and Andhra Pradesh’s Jagan — follow him at 47 and 38 cases.
None of these cases relate to the most heinous crimes like rape or murder. However, they include charges of criminal intimidation (KCR and Reddy), rioting (KCR), cheating (Reddy), attempt to murder (KCR), and kidnapping (Stalin).
None of the country’s 10 BJP CMs have a single criminal case against them, their affidavits show.
Among non-BJP CMs, Rajasthan’s Ashok Gehlot, West Bengal’s Banerjee, Odisha’s Patnaik, Meghalaya’s Conrad Sangma, Nagaland’s Neiphiu Rio, and Puducherry’s Rangaswamy also face no criminal charges.
Here, too, Tamang stands out — he’s the only chief minister to have been convicted in a corruption case. Tamang was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and served a year in jail between 2017 and 2018 after he was found guilty of misappropriating funds in a cow distribution scheme when he was minister for animal husbandry in 1996.
He was barred by the Representation of the People Act 1951 from contesting any elections for six years. But in 2021, the Election Commission of India reduced that period to a year and a month.
Education levels
Assam’s fiery Himanta Biswa Sarma appears to be the most educated among India’s CMs. According to his affidavit, he has a doctorate in philosophy, an MA in political science, and a law degree.
His Tripura counterpart Manik Saha has a master’s degree in dentistry. There are three engineers on the list too. While Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal and Karnataka’s Basavraj Bommai both have degrees in mechanical engineering, Gujarat’s Bhupendra Patel has a diploma in civil engineering.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra’s Eknath Shinde is the least educated of all his peers. The Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena leader, whose auto driver-to-politician story is well known, isn’t even a high school graduate.
Who has the most vehicles?
Only eight CMs — Khattar, Vijayan, Gehlot, Stalin, KCR, Adityanath, Dhami, and Banerjee — own no vehicles of their own, the affidavits show.
Meanwhile, Andhra CM Reddy has four vehicles to his name — three Scorpios and a BMW. For these, he writes in his affidavit: “Bulletproof vehicles owned by others, are registered in my name (though not owned or invested by me) in view of (the) stipulation by Ministry of Home Affairs”.
Khandu owns the highest number of vehicles — seven in all, worth Rs 1.5 crore.
These are a Tata Truck, two Ford Endeavours, one Toyota Fortuner, one Bolero, and one Tata dumper.
After him, Nagaland’s Neiphiu Rio has the next set of most expensive vehicles. His three — a Maruti Alto, a BMW MINI, and a Land Cruiser Prado — cost over Rs 1 crore.
On the other hand, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel and his wife Mukteshwari Baghel, both of whom list “agriculture” as their profession, own one tractor each.
Immovable assets
Although Jagan Reddy is much ahead of his counterparts in terms of his net worth, it’s Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik who has inherited the most property, the affidavits show.
Patnaik inherited Rs 60 crore worth of immovable property — over 1.5 times more than Puducherry’s Rangaswamy, who follows him at Rs 38 crore.
Immovable property includes residential and commercial buildings, as well as agricultural and non-agricultural land.
Having already inherited crores worth of property, however, neither Rangaswamy nor Patnaik have acquired any of their own, the affidavits show.
Others who haven’t acquired any such new property are Tripura’s Manik Saha, who inherited Rs 10.8 crore, and Haryana’s Khattar, who was bequeathed only Rs 33 lakh.
Eight CMs who inherited nothing have made fortunes for themselves.
KCR leads this list with assets worth Rs 12 crore. He’s followed by Eknath Shinde (Rs 4.47 crore), Basavraj Bommai (Rs. 3.77 crore), Bhupendra Patel (Rs 3.04 crore), and Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Rs 2.83 crore).
Mizoram CM Zoramthanga, Karnataka’s Bommai, and Jharkhand’s Soren, all of whom inherited nothing, now own immovable assets worth over Rs 1 crore.
Three chief ministers who own no immovable property are Adityanath, Banerjee, and Sarma. However, Sarma’s wife Riniki Bhuyan has immovable assets worth Rs 4 crore to her name, the affidavits show.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: Nearly 5,000 criminal cases pending against sitting & former MPs, MLAs, SC told