There are old figures available. The SP’s audit statements for 2013-14 and ’14-15 declared an income (fees, subscriptions, contributions) of Rs 159 crore and Rs 181 crore respectively. The expenses shown for the respective years were around Rs 22 crore and Rs 76 crore. Experts naturally don’t subscribe to declared figures. “Political parties use proxy organisations to print adverts,” says Alok Rai, who teaches marketing and brand management at the BHU. “Parties hire agencies for which they have a very high budget.” For instance, the Congress in 2014 hired Japanese ad-PR company Dentsu, Rai notes, for Rs 500 crore to fetch the party’s leader Rahul Gandhi an image makeover. For the parliamentary polls that time, the Grand Old Party disclosed Rs 563 crore as its total election expenses. As per the poll body’s data, the SP declared an expenditure of Rs 64 crore for the 2014 LS elections. Compare this with that of the BJP’s Rs 700 crore—even that, many allege was a deflated figure. Going by the pattern, how much would the SP have actually expended in 2014 and 2017? Unanswered phone calls to Akhilesh and his associates leave it a mystery.