Kamal Nath’s eldest son Nakul Nath is the richest of all candidates who will contest the first phase of elections. A member of the Indian National Congress, 49-year-Nakul Nath is the incumbent MP from Madhya Pradesh’s Chhindwara and is set to fight the polls yet again from the same constituency.

He owns assets worth ₹716 crore. A major portion of Nath’s assets are tied to two companies-Unique Technobuild Pvt. Ltd and International Management Technologies Private Ltd. Nath and his wife Alka Nath are the directors of both these companies. Compared with 2019, Nath’s assets have grown by ₹56 crore.

The first phase of general election 2024 is set to begin on April 19. All constituencies of Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Lakshadweep, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Puducherry and Andaman Nicobar, and some constituencies of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Jammu Kashmir will go to polls in phase I. The election will be held in a total of seven phases, ending in the first week of June.

United by money

The second richest candidate in the first phase is AIADMK’s Erode candidate Ashok Kumar. Kumar, with a wealth of ₹662 crore, is the Chairman and Managing Director of The Indian Public Schools. He holds shares worth ₹450 crore in the group.

BJP’s Sivaganga candidate Devanathan Yadav T has assets worth ₹304 crore. His major rival in the constituency is INC’s Karti Chidambaram, who is the tenth-richest candidate of phase I. Chidambaram is the incumbent MP from Sivaganga and has assets worth ₹96 crore. In five years, his assets have grown by 22 per cent.

At the same time, the poorest candidates among the ones fielded by national parties are BSP’s Sivaganga and Virudhunagar candidates Ranjithkumar Baluswamy and Suresh, with assets worth ₹23,000 each. CPI’s Bastar candidate Phulsingh Kachlam has assets worth ₹1.61 lakh.

In the first phase, six political parties fielded more than 20 candidates. These are the BSP, BJP, INC, Naam Tamilar Katchi, AIADMK and DMK. Of them, the average assets of an AIADMK candidate is ₹35.61 crore. The party fielded 36 candidates in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry combined. The other rich candidates of the party apart from Ashok Kumar are, Rajasekar E, the candidate from Kancheepuram with assets of ₹65 crore and its Krishnagiri candidate Jayaprakash V with assets of ₹135 crore.

DMK follows AIADMK, with each MLA having an average asset of ₹31.22 crore. The richest among their candidates is former Coimbatore Mayor Ganapathy Rajkumar, who will face the elections from Coimbatore. He has assets worth ₹89 crore.

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