NEW DELHI: In a piece of statistics that raises questions about representative democracy, a report has found that the total declared assets of 4,001 sitting MLAs is more than the combined annual budgets for 2023-24 of Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim. To put this in perspective, these three states together have a population of around 42 lakh.

Extracting data from the MLAs’ election affidavits, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and the National Election Watch (NEW) have put the figure at a whopping Rs 54,545 crore. The average of assets per MLA, belonging to 84 political parties and Independent, is Rs 13.63 crore, it said. The total assets for 223 MLAs from Karnataka is Rs 14,359 crore – more than the individual annual budgets of Mizoram and Sikkim – while that of 224 MLAs in Tamil Nadu stood at Rs 2,767 crore - Rs 12.35 crore on average. The total assets of BJP and Congress MLAs is Rs 16,234 crore and Rs 15,798 crore, respectively.