Amidst the Political pandemonium, the top politicians of the country instill their confidence on Life Insurance Corporation of India, LIC the state run insurance company by applying for coverage on their lives. The poll affidavits reveal that high profile politicians like BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, Congress’ Ajay Maken, and Naveen Jindal among others have taken LIC Policies. Loads of poll contestants have also taken LIC Policies. Most politicians have taken their life coverage from LIC alone while only a few of them have started trying out private players.
India has a very low insurance penetration with only 35 crore policies in a country where the population is 120 crores, which is one-fifth of the global population. Even with LIC trying to spread its wings from 1956 and the private players striving to increase their footprints, insurance has still not been considered as a need. It is still treated as an expense in the minds of an average Indian!
Some politicians however have shown some trust in the private players as well such as JD(U) candidate from Paschim Champaran Prakash Jha has policies in LIC and Max Life Insurance, BSP’s Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali and TMC’s Sudip Bandyopadhyay have also taken policies in LIC, Kotak Life and Max as well as TMC’s Darjeeling candidate Baichung Bhutia has taken up insurance plans from LIC along with Max Life and Bajaj Allianz.
According to the sources of poll affidavits, the policies opted by the politicians are usually regular premium ones ranging of a sum insured of Rs 1 to 50 Lakhs. However, some politicians like Arvind Kejriwal, Sonia Gandhi and L.K.Advani has not declared their life insurance policies in the poll affidavits!
