Cash, drugs and booze among record election bribes seized by India

CNN —

A record quantity of bribes, including cash, booze, drugs and precious metals, has been seized by Indian election authorities in the run-up to mammoth nationwide polls that begin on Friday.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday revealed it had recovered inducements worth just over $550 million since March — the largest amount in the country’s 75-year electoral history.

It marks a “sharp increase” on the more than $400 million in bribes seized by the ECI in the country’s last general election in 2019, the agency said.

The two states that saw the highest total amounts change hands are both strongholds of the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP): Rajasthan and neighboring Gujarat, home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While Gujarat recorded the largest amount in drug seizures, Rajasthan was top of the list for “freebies” — goods and services promised (usually by politicians) gratis to voters in exchange for their support.

Modi previously took aim at what he described as a culture of offering freebies for votes during a 2022 speech, urging voters to be careful.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters are attending a rally by Himanta Biswa Sarma, Chief Minister of the northeastern state of Assam (not pictured), for the upcoming Lok Sabha election in Nagaon District, Assam, India, on April 4, 2024.

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“People of this Revdi (freebies) culture will never build new expressways, new airports or new defense corridors for you,” he said. “People of this Revdi culture think that by distributing freebies to people, they can buy them – together we need to defeat their