NEW DELHI: Members of the 15th Lok Sabha may not be too bothered about salary hikes for themselves. Not with as many as 300 crorepatis getting the people's mandate this time — up 95% from 154 in the last Lok Sabha.

According to assets declared before the Election Commission, the wealthiest MP in the new House is Namma Nageswara Rao of TDP, elected from Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. He is worth Rs 173 crore. Rao is followed by Congress's Naveen Jindal from Kurukshetra with assets of Rs 131 crore.

Others at the top of the crorepati club are L Rajagopal (Congress), Praful Patel (NCP), Supriya Sule (NCP), Rajkumari Ratna Singh of Pratapgarh (Congress) and Andhra CM Y S R Reddy's son Y S Rajamohan Reddy.

The list of crorepatis was compiled by National Election Watch (NEW), a nationwide body comprising more than 1,200 NGOs and other citizen led organizations working on electoral reforms.

The maximum number of crorepatis were found to be from Congress (137), followed by BJP (58), SP (14) and BSP (13). These parties are followed by DMK and Shiv Sena.

Interestingly, JD(U) was found to have the seventh biggest group of crorepatis in the House, ahead of 'richer' parties like NCP, BJD and TDP.

Amongst states, maximum crorepatis are from UP (52), followed by Maharastra (37), Andhra Pradesh (31) and Karnataka (25), Bihar (17), Tamil Nadu (17) and MP (15). Gujarat, at number 10, has sent 12 crorepatis to the new House this time — less than the number from Punjab and Rajasthan.

Anil Bairwal, coordinator, NEW, said, "The misuse of monetary incentives to buy votes has increased sharply since the last elections and continues to be a source of threat to real democracy."

Bairwal doubts that development would be the priority of the new MPs who have spent huge sums to get themselves elected. "They are more likely to focus on recovering the funds they spent and on giving favours to those who supported their campaigns," he added.