Almost all incumbent Karnataka ministers, who are contesting the upcoming elections, saw a growth in their wealth within the range of ₹75 lakh and ₹593 crore in the last five years. This is according to businessline’s analysis of affidavits from the Election Commission of India. April 20 was the last day to file affidavits, for the election scheduled to happen on May 10.
The current ministry under Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai was formed on July 28, 2021. However, all the current ministers contested the Assembly elections in 2018.
Bommai saw a significant rise in his assets from ₹8.92 crore in 2018 to a massive ₹52.12 crore. This is also because the Chief Minister has inherited wealth worth ₹20.77 crore from his Hindu Undivided Family.
The richest among the current ministers is MTB Nagaraj, BJP’s candidate for Hosakote. His assets in 2023 are worth ₹1,609.55 crore. He witnessed a 58.45 per cent increase in his assets in 2018. Nagaraj added ₹593.75 crore to his wealth in this period. He is an agriculturist and a businessman and owns a brick company.
The second on the list is film producer turned politician Munirathna Naidu, whose wealth increased from ₹89.13 crore in 2018 to ₹293.58 crore in 2023. He is followed by K Gopalaiah whose wealth grew 6.5 times. A candidate’s assets are the cumulative sum of the value of all the movable and immovable assets that they and their spouse and dependants own.
Almost all re-contesting ministers had an increase in wealth owing to an increase in income, accumulation of assets, growth in deposits or change in the market value of their assets. The only exception is Karnataka’s Minister of Higher Education Dr CN Ashwath Narayan. While Narayan and his wife jointly owned assets worth ₹21.5 crore in 2018, it had reduced to ₹17.4 crore now.
The other governments
The State has already had three different Chief Ministers in the last five years (Janata Dal Secular’s HD Kumaraswamy and BJP’s BS Yediyurappa and incumbent CM Basavaraj Bommai). The analysis of the affidavits of the 2023 election candidates who were ministers in other governments shows that most of them had significant growth in wealth in the last five years too.
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Those contesting from HD Kumaraswamy’s former government saw their wealth grow by ₹49.52 crore on an average. INC’s Kanakapura candidate DK Shivakumar — who was part of the Kumaraswamy-led ministry — declared that he had assets worth ₹1,413.75 crore in 2023, a 68.3 per cent increase from 2018. Of his 2023 assets, movable assets stood at ₹244.93 crore, and immovable assets were ₹970 crore.
Between the 2018 elections and 2023, ministers from Yeddiyurappa’s government, who aren’t part of the Bommai-led ministry and are contesting the Karnataka elections saw their wealth diminish by ₹1.5 crore on average. The wealth of incumbent ministers is however not calculated for this particular analysis.
When it comes to candidates who saw a drastic decline in wealth, a notable one was BJP’s Ramesh Jarakiholi, whose assets fell by over 97 per cent to ₹48 crore. His declared assets in 2018 were ₹122.8 crore.