New Delhi: Out of the 2560 candidates in the Karnataka elections fray, 391 have self-declared criminal cases against them while 254 of them have “serious criminal cases” in their names. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has analysed affidavits of 2560 candidates out of the 2655 and released a report days ahead of the May 12 elections.
Ninety-five candidates have submitted affidavits that were “incomplete” or “badly scanned”.
As many as 25 candidates have declared attempt to murder cases against their names while four have murder cases.
Twenty three candidates have declared cases related to crime against women such as assault or criminal force against woman with intent to outrage her modesty under IPC Section 354) and others.
The ADR report says, among all major parties contesting the elections, BJP has the most number of candidates with criminal cases, followed by Congress and JD(S).
Out of the 224 BJP candidates, 83 or 37% have criminal cases of varied degrees against them while 59 or 27% of the 220 candidates from Congress have similar cases in their names.
JD(S) has 41 such candidates among its 199 contenders while Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), too, has 5 candidates out of its 25, with criminal records.
Five of AAP’s candidates too have such dubious records while 108 out of the 1,090 Independent candidates have declared criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits.
Again, in the “serious criminal cases” category too, BJP has the maximum number of candidates with such offences followed by Congress and JD(S).
Among major parties, 58 BJP candidates have serious criminal records while 32 of 220 Congress candidates and 29 JD(S) candidates similar records.
The ADR has also declared 56 Karnataka seats as “red alert constituencies” where there are at least 3 candidates in the poll fray with declared criminal records.
Out of the 2560 candidates analysed, 883 are declared crorepatis with the most belonging to BJP. 93% of the party’s candidates are crorepatis while Congress, too, has 207 crorepatis among its 207 contenders.
An interesting point to note is that an average candidate in the Karnataka election has assets worth Rs 7.54 crores in his/her name.
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