A Supreme Court lawyer and a resident of Bengaluru have lodged separate complaints against Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar accusing him of concealing his assets in his election affidavit.

Supreme Court lawyer Avani Bansal and Bengaluru resident Renjith Thomas called for immediate rejection of the nomination, alleging that the affidavit has discrepancies as it does not mention luxury automobiles and properties and grossly undervalues shares, among other things.

A member of Chandrasekhar’s team said they would not like to comment on the affidavit.

In their complaints addressed to Thiruvananthapuram district collector and returning officer Geromic George on Friday coinciding with the date of scrutiny of nominations, Bansal and Thomas highlighted the key contents of Chandrasekhar’s affidavit that didn’t reveal the full extent of his wealth.

Thomas stated that the declared assets “valued at around Rs 36.12 crores is grossly inaccurate and fails to reflect his true financial standing”.

He said Chandrasekhar had declared Rs 65 crore as his assets in the 2018 Rajya Sabha elections he contested from Karnataka, which too, was a matter of controversy. Thomas had filed complaints before the Election Commission and made pleas before Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court.

According to Thomas, Chandrasekhar had declared assets worth Rs 25 crore and Rs 37 crore in the Rajya Sabha polls in 2006 and 2012, respectively.

Chandrasekhar, who is contesting against three-time Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, filed his nomination on Thursday.

Lawyer Bansal, in her complaint, noted that Chandrasekhar had declared approximately Rs 9.25 crore as his total movable assets. “This is factually wrong,” she alleged since approximately Rs 45 crore is listed under the head for investment in bonds, debentures, shares, and units in companies and mutual funds.

She noted that receivables — hence assets — from individuals and other entities such as companies amount to approximately Rs 41 crore, “but that too hasn’t been added to the gross total value. Thus, total movable assets are being shown to be Rs 9 crore approximately only, which is not only factually incorrect but a clear attempt to mislead the voters and thereby a corrupt practice.”

The Congress’s Kerala unit, in a series of posts on X, pointed to alleged errors in the affidavit. “There are glaring mistakes in his affidavit itself, where he has shown his shares/bonds/debentures holding as a liability (negative) and manipulated the data to show a low figure of Rs 36 crore. He has written two different figures of Rs 9
crore and Rs 13 crore in two different places,” stated one of the posts.

Bansal claimed to have found lacunae even in the immovable assets Chandrasekhar has listed since there is no mention of his house in Bengaluru. She noted that Chandrasekhar had not declared the property even during the 2018 Rajya Sabha elections.