As soon as major political parties kicked off the poll process by announcing their lists of candidates, advertisements and pamphlets from these accountants started making appearances at the party offices. Most of the names, however, go around through word of mouth.

Both the major parties — the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — have their legal cells in place that help the candidates fill nomination papers and prepare accounts. “We have told our candidates to be very careful while submitting nomination papers. There is a specialised legal cell to help them with all necessary formalities,” says Delhi BJP president Dr Harsh Vardhan.

It is, usually, the independent candidates who are left without any support system. In the last Assembly elections, a majority of the 759 candidates who had filed nominations were independents.

Every candidate who is filing nominations has to submit nearly 11 documents — their electoral certificate, electoral certificate of their proposers, income tax returns and education certificate of the candidate and spouse, certificate of property tax, wealth tax, sales tax or VAT, pending criminal or court case, balance sheet and detailed value assessment of property among others.

Chartered accountant Gulshan Dhingra (47) has been “helping” candidates file their nominations for the last 15 years. “I started out in 1993 with late BJP MP K L Sharma. Later, I worked for other BJP leaders like Nand Kishore Gard and Sahib Singh Verma,” he says. Though Dhingra claims to be a devout BJP worker, he agrees that he does help independents if they approached him. “I do the work free of cost for BJP candidates. But when independent candidates panic at the last moment, I do dispatch my accountants to them,” he says.

“One needs to be extremely careful with filing of the nomination papers and preparing the accounts like property value assessments. If any of the opponents file a counter affidavit, there is a possibility of the nomination being cancelled. It usually comes as a package and we charge according to the candidate’s financial capabilities,” says Pawan Kumar, a chartered accountant. This year, more than 100 independent candidates have already filed their nominations.