Assembly poll results: 33% MLAs have criminal cases against them
Every second legislator in Kerala who has been elected in the just-concluded assembly elections has a criminal case against them, almost twice the proportion of lawmakers with such records in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
Every second legislator in Kerala who has been elected in the just-concluded assembly elections has a criminal case against them, almost twice the proportion of lawmakers with such records in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
In all, one in three members of legislative assembly (MLA) elected in the four states - Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam and Union territory Puducherry - have at least one criminal case against them, a quick analysis of the affidavits filed by the candidates has revealed.
Of the 822 winning candidates, 270 or 33% had a criminal case against them. There were a combined 1,043 criminal cases against all the candidates or about 1.4 cases per candidates.
The percentage of newly-elected legislators with at least one criminal case was the highest in Kerala where 83 of the 140 members of the legislative assembly – 59% – had a case against them. In all, the new assembly has members with 485 cases against them, an average of 3.5 case per legislator.
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In contrast, 30% of West Bengal’s 294 newly-elected legislators have at least one criminal case against them. Between them, the 88 legislators have a total of 270 cases or 1.1 case per MLA.
In Tamil Nadu, 75 of the 232 winning candidates (32%) have a criminal case. This comes to an average of 1.2 criminal case per legislator.
The proportion is a little higher in neighbouring Puducherry where 11 of the 30 MLAs or 37%, have a case against them.
Assam has the lowest proportion of legislators with a criminal case. Only 13 of the 126 MLAs have a case lodged against them.
Among parties which won 10 or more seats, the parties w/ the highest percentage of MLAs with criminal cases are:
The states, in order of percentage of MLAs with criminal cases, are:
According to statistics compiled by the Association for Democratic Reforms, there were fewer candidates with criminal cases in Assam this year as against 2011 when 10% of the 955 candidates had declared at least one criminal case against them. In 2016, only 7% of the 1,062 candidates had a criminal case.