Hyderabad, Nov. 3: On an average a political party needs to spend about Rs 10 crore to mobilise five lakh people for a public meeting. Though no party is willing to go on record about this for obvious reasons, they all concur with this figure in private.
"On an average, a party has to spend Rs 150 per worker," said a senior leader. "This includes wages, food and water. The transportation cost is not included. If you add transportation cost, it goes up to Rs 200 per head, depending on the mode of transport." Nowadays, parties have to hire people for meetings. The era of people walking kilometres to hear speeches of their favourite leaders is long gone. "The cost of cutouts, banners, hoardings, advertisements and other paraphernalia is apart from this," said the leader.
Huge amounts were spent on Chiranjeevi’s public meeting at Tirupati. It is also said that the Congress spent Rs 15 crore for Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s meetings at Tirupati and Anantapur. As many as 4,000 APSRTC buses were hired for the public meeting besides 1,000 transport buses from Karnataka. Interestingly, the entire crowd was mobilised from within the district. Similarly, the Congress reportedly spent Rs 9 crore to hire buses for Tirupati SHGs for the "interaction" with Mrs Sonia Gandhi. And after doing all this, parties surely want the media to report huge figures.
Cops generally calculate crowds by estimating that 5,000 people can stand on an acre of open land. For instance, the public meeting at Anantapur was held in an 80 acre plot. This means that there were around four lakh people there and around two lakh in the surrounding roads.
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