o this new ADR report just came out and it’s kind of wild. West Bengal’s Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari is officially the second poorest among all the chief ministers in India right now. His total declared assets are around Rs 85.87 lakh. Only one person has less — Jammu and Kashmir’s Omar Abdullah, who is sitting at about Rs 55 lakh. That’s it. Just the two of them at the bottom.
Most of us assume these guys are rolling in money, right? Fancy houses, cars, investments everywhere. But Adhikari’s affidavit is almost simple. He’s got roughly twelve thousand rupees in cash, a little over seven lakh in bank accounts, and around twenty-four and a half lakh in fixed deposits and Kisan Vikas Patras. His movable stuff comes to about 24.5 lakh, and the land and houses make up the rest — around 61 lakh. No car. No jewellery. No loans. For last year he declared an income of just over 17 lakh.
Interestingly, this is actually less than what he declared in 2021. Back then it was a bit over one crore. So the number has gone down.
Now look at the other end. Karnataka’s D K Shivakumar is right at the top with over 1,413 crore. Then Chandrababu Naidu with 931 crore, Tamil Nadu’s Joseph Vijay with 648 crore, and Pema Khandu with 332 crore. Four of these CMs are billionaires in rupee terms. The average for all 31 chief ministers is a crazy 118 crore. Only a handful of them have less than one crore.
ADR also checked the criminal side. Fourteen out of the thirty-one have cases against them, and eleven of those are serious ones. So money and legal trouble still travel together a lot in politics.
It’s a strange picture, isn’t it? Two guys under a crore and a few sitting on hundreds of crores. Some people will say Adhikari’s number shows he’s clean and not into the usual money game. Others will say affidavits never tell the full story. Both sides will find something to argue about.
Anyway, the report is out now. The numbers are public. Whether it changes how people look at him or not is another matter. But for now, this is where he stands — second from the bottom.
Sources:
Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) report, July 2026
Times of India, Economic Times, and Deccan Herald coverage of the same report, 30 July 2026
