Indian politicians contesting several provincial elections over the next few weeks are hiring private investigators not just to keep an eye on rival candidates but also their own poll managers.
"Elections cost a lot of money. Keeping track of funds through minders helps us monitor the campaign better,"
said a Congress Party candidate contesting assembly polls in New Delhi.
He has hired a string of private detectives to trail, other than his opponents, his campaign managers, to make sure they are "appropriately" spending campaign funds rather than simply pocketing the money.
Another of his colleagues has hired a private detective to tell him in advance which film personality his opponent plans on deploying as part of his campaign strategy so he can persuade a bigger and more popular Bollywood - or television star - to endorse him.
Other than in Delhi, polls are staggered over the next few weeks in the central Indian states of Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, western Rajasthan province, Mizoram in the northeast bordering Myanmar and the insurgency-ridden Jammu and Kashmir principality.
"Candidates have hired us to do specific jobs. We are asked to collect information against opponents and party dissidents," Sanjeev Deshwal of the Certified Private Detective Agencies Association in Delhi said.
Depending on the task, the fee charged by the detective agencies ranges from 100,000 rupees ($3625) to 1 million rupees.
Meanwhile, other than detectives, "godmen" and astrologers are also busy dusting their cosmic calendars and honing their star-reading skills for their political patrons in order to "organise" the heavens to help them win elections.
Whether candidates believe everything their astrologers tell them is another matter. But, as one senior Congress Party member said, there was no "celestial" advice he would forgo. It might end up working, he added.
