New Delhi, May 17: Every fourth member of the new Lok Sabha faces one or more criminal cases in various parts of the country and could possibly colour the way people look at the world’s largest democracy.
According to the affidavits filed by the contestants of the 15th Lok Sabha elections, at least one case has been filed against 150 of the winners, including 73 who are charged serious offences.
Eight of the new MPs face at least 10 cases.
These include Congress’ Radadiya Vitthalbhai Hansrajbhai (Porbandar), JD(S) leader N Chaluvarayswamy (Mandya), BJD’s Tathagata Satpathy (Dhenkanal), Shiv Sena’s Chandrakant Khaire (Aurangabad), NCP’s Udyanraje Pratapsinhmaharaj Bhonsle (Satara), CPM’s P Karunakaran (Kasaragod), BJP’s Ramakant Yadav (Azamgarh) and SP’s Bal Kumar Patel (Mirzapur).
Those with five or more cases include BJP’s Feroze Varun Gandhi (Pilibhit), Congress’ Sanjay Nirupam (Mumbai North), BJP’s C R Patil (Navasari), Trinamool Congress’ Tapas Paul (Krishnagar), Congress’ N Dharam Singh (Bidar) and Congress’ Rajkumari Ratna Singh (Pratapgarh).
Other prominent winners with criminal cases include Kirti Azad, Gopinath Munde, Lalu Prasad and Aditya Nath.
In 2004, there were only 128 MPs with criminal cases. According to National Election Watch, there are more than 200 cases with serious IPC charges. A total of 73 MPs have serious charges against them.
NEW further said that the number of MPs with criminal records has gone up since 2004 elections, when there was a total of 128 MPs with criminal cases. At that time, 55 MPs had serious criminal records.
On a party-wise basis, the BJP has maximum 42 MPs facing criminal cases, closely followed by 41 from the Congress and eight from the SP and the Shivsena each. Besides, there are seven from JD(U), six from BSP and four each from BJD, AITC and NCP. DMK, RJD, CPM and ADMK have three MPs each with criminal records.
Among the states, UP has the maximum 31 MPs with criminal records, followed by Maharashtra (23), Bihar (17), AP (11), Gujarat (11), Karnataka (9), WB (7) and Tamil Nadu (7).
The major candidates with criminal records who lost the elections include Dinesh Rathour, Akhilesh Singh, Ram Nandan Yadav, Ravindar Kr Rana and Vijay Kumar Shukla from Bihar and Atiq Ahmad and Mitrasen from UP
