This year’s municipal corporation is much richer than the previous one. The civic body has at least 64 newly elected councillors with assets worth over Rs 5 crore compared with 39 in 2017, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms.
An ADR report issued on Thursday said that the average value of the assets held by the winning candidates in the 2022 elections was Rs 4.3 crore against Rs 2.9 crore in 2017.

The report said that candidates with wealth totalling Rs 5-10 crore comprise 26% of the new councillors. There are 24% in the Rs 2-5 crore slab and 26% in the Rs 50 lakh-2 crore category. In comparison, in 2017, 36% of the winners had wealth of between Rs 1 crore and Rs 5 crore.

ADR and Delhi Election Watch analysed the self-sworn affidavits of 248 of the 250 councillors who were declared elected to MCD on Wednesday. The assets of two winning candidates couldn’t be studied due to the unavailability of clear and complete affidavits with the State Election Commission of Delhi. ADR also analysed the financial status of all the 1,349 candidates contesting the MCD elections.
Of the 248 winning candidates, 167 (67%) have wealth of above Rs 1 crore.
In 2017, only 135 of 266 councillors analysed, or 51%, were crorepatis.
Among BJP’s 104 candidates who won, 82 (79%) have declared assets worth more than Rs 1 crore, while 77 (58%) of 132 successful contestants from AAP, six (67%) of nine from INC and two of three independents also filed affidavits showing wealth more than Rs 1 crore.
The average assets per winning candidate of the 104 BJP councillors amount to Rs 5.3 crore, while the same figure for the 132 AAP councillors considered is Rs 3.6 crore, the report said. The average asset value per candidate for the nine Congress councillors is Rs 4.1 crore and Rs 5.5 crore for the three independent councillors.
A member of ADR said, “While the role of money in our elections is evident from the fact that all major political parties gave tickets to wealthy candidates, the election results also showed that chances of winning elections are high when the candidate is financially strong.”
The winning candidate with assets of the highest worth is Raj Pal Singh of BJP, who won from Sriniwaspuri. He had a declared wealth of more than Rs 47.7 crore. Manju Setia of AAP, winner from Subhash Nagar, followed Singh in terms of asset value with Rs 42.9 crore, while Vineet Vohra of BJP, the victorious candidate from Pachim Vihar, is third in the list with total assets of Rs 37.9 crore.
Singh, who beat AAP candidate Indu by a margin of 1,703 votes, said on Thursday that wealth had nothing to do with winning elections.
“It is performance that is considered by voters,” he said. “I made sports complexes and recreation centres in my wards even when there were budget constraints in the corporation. I never disappointed anyone in the last five years irrespective of the political party he or she supported,”said Singh.
Meanwhile, none of the top three wealthiest contestants could beat their rivals. Ram Dev Sharma of BJP and contesting the Ballimaran seat has wealth totalling Rs 66.9 crore. Nandini Sharma of BJP in Malviya Nagar had declared assets of Rs 49.8 crore and AAP’s Jitender Bansala in Karawal Nagar-West, Rs 48.2 crore.