As many as 320 candidates out of the 2,188 affidavits analysed have declared criminal cases while 195 (or 9%) have declared serious criminal cases registered against themselves.
The number of candidates with criminal cases against them has gone up in the 2018 Rajasthan assembly elections, according to the Rajasthan Election Watch (REW) and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
As many as 320 candidates out of the 2,188 affidavits analysed have declared criminal cases while 195 (or 9%) have declared serious criminal cases registered against themselves.
The affidavits of 106 candidates were not analysed as they were “either badly scanned or incomplete”.
In the 2013 assembly elections, 224 (or 11%) of the 2,030 candidates had declared criminal cases and 140 (7%) had declared serious criminal cases.
As per the ADR report, the Congress has fielded the most number of candidates with criminal cases (43 of the 193 candidates analysed) as well as those with serious criminal cases (27).
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded 33 (out of 198) candidates with criminal cases and 21 with serious criminal cases, Verma said.
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Among the other major parties, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s 26 of the 141 candidates have criminal cases and 16 serious criminal cases against themselves; the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has 31 of its 178 candidates with criminal cases and 20 with serious criminal cases, Verma said.
The ADR official said four candidates have declared cases related to murder, 25 attempt to murder, 11 kidnapping, and 16 with cases related to crime against women against themselves.
The ADR report also analysed the candidates’ wealth to find that there are 597(or 27% of 2,188) crorepati candidates contesting the polls this time as against 508 (or 25% of 2,030) candidates in the previous elections.
The top three richest candidates are Kamini Jindal of the National Unionist Zamindara Party (contesting from Ganganagar) with declared assets worth Rs 287 crore, Parasram Mordia of the Congress (from Dhod) with assets worth Rs 172 crore, and Prem Singh Bajore of the BJP (from Neem Ka Thana) with assets worth Rs 142 crore.
