Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday urged the Election Commission to respond to a report alleging that ten “anonymous parties” in Gujarat received Rs 4,300 crore as funds in five years, even though they rarely contested polls.

The ten political parties received these funds from 2019-’20 to 2023-’24, Dainik Bhaskar reported on Tuesday.

This period encompassed the two Lok Sabha elections of 2019 and 2024, and the 2022 Assembly election in the state. The parties fielded only 43 candidates in the polls, who garnered only 54,069 votes in total, the newspaper reported.

Further, these parties reported expenses of only Rs 39.02 lakh, but their audit reports showed expenses of Rs 3,500 crore, according to Dainik Bhaskar.

The parties are Lokshahi Satta Party, Bharatiya National Janata Dal, Swatantra Abhivyakti Party, New India United Party, Satyawadi Rakshak Party, Bharatiya Janparishad, Saurashtra Janata Paksh, Jan Man Party, Manavadhikar National Party and Gareeb Kalyan Party.

On Wednesday, Gandhi asked how these parties procured thousands of crores of rupees and where the money went.

“Will the Election Commission carry out an investigation, or will it ask for an affidavit here too,” the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha asked on X. “Or will it change laws, so that this data can also be hidden?”

Gandhi was referring to the Election Commission’s demand that he furnish an affidavit to back his claims of large-scale irregularities in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central parliamentary constituency.

The Congress leader had claimed that the party had spent six months examining the electoral rolls in the constituency and found discrepancies in 1,00,250 names. He alleged that this was evidence of the Election Commission having colluded with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

In response to the allegations, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar said that Gandhi would have to either put forward the allegations in the form of an affidavit, or apologise to the country.

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