Barely a month after newly-formed political parties took on themselves to give power to the people and encourage citizen’s participation in democracy, lack of funds has come in the way of realising their dreams. Political parties like Jago Party, Professionals Party of India (PPI) and the Lok Satta party unanimously agreed that gathering funds for lesser known parties and getting visibility amongst a plethora of political parties seem to be their big challenges ahead of elections.

“Collecting funds has become a very serious problem for us. It is difficult to digest the fact that people in this city cannot even chip a meagre amount of Rs 500. They clearly don’t want to put their money where their mouth is,” said environment activist-turned-politician Rishi Aggarwal, who will be contesting from North-west Mumbai for the Jago party.

The Jago party for the last one month has done massive door-to-door campaigning and fund collecting exercise in their constituency. “For candidates like me, credibility is the only selling point. When we undertook our door-to-door campaign, we went to each house and made sure that they question us on everything. I gave them a copy of my work. Only after they were convinced of our cause, they gave us donation,” said Aggarwal. However, he admits that the results have been far from desirous. The ceiling for election expenses prescribed by the Election Commission is Rs 25 lakh. “This much amount is needed by any party to get visibility. But so far we have only collected some where between Rs 75 000 and 80, 000,” said Aggarwal.

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