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Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has reported to the Election Commission of India (ECI) an expenditure of Rs 286.99 crore on the West Bengal assembly election and Rs 82.67 crore on Kerala, two states that went to the polls in the same window.

The statement covers the period from March 15, when the election was announced, to May 6, when the process was completed. It was submitted on August 25, with the signature of the office secretary Mahendra Kumar Pandey, with a covering letter regretting the delay.

West Bengal accounted for more than half of what BJP spent across all five assembly elections held in 2026, a combined Rs 529.38 crore. The contrast within the figures is sharper still.

Bengal has 294 assembly seats and Kerala 140, so some of the gap is attributable to size, but not most of it. Per seat, Bengal cost the BJP roughly Rs 97.6 lakh against Kerala’s Rs 59 lakh.

The Bengal figure divides into Rs 217.16 crore on general party propaganda and Rs 69.83 crore on candidates and candidate-related expenditure.

Every candidate got exactly the same

Candidate spending was Rs 69.83 crore, and the largest part of it is strikingly uniform. All 294 Bengal candidates received exactly Rs 20 lakh by bank transfer. That is where Rs 58.80 crore comes from.

Nothing at all was declared for candidate-specific media advertising in either state.

Central headquarters separately transferred Rs 225 crore to the Bengal state unit in three tranches, on March 24, April 7 and May 6. Those are movements of money inside the party.

Of the Bengal total, Rs 88.48 crore or 30.8% went into media advertising. Kerala spent a larger share of a much smaller budget on media.

Three heads take nearly all of it

The central party office accounted for Rs 55.77 crore of that media........

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