About three-fourths of candidates fielded by six prominent political parties in recent elections in Kerala were facing criminal cases, the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) has said in its report.

In the neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the ADR report said 322 or 41% of the 787 candidates fielded by 12 prominent political parties said they were fighting criminal cases. The report says 143 or 18% of candidates declared they were fighting serious criminal cases.

Both states went to polls on April 6 in which Tamil Nadu voted for the opposition DMK while Kerala reelected the ruling LDF regime.

The ADR relied on the declarations submitted by candidates to come up with its findings.

In Kerala’s assembly polls, 48 political parties contested, of which the ADR has picked the BJP, CPI, CPI(M), Congress, IUML, and the Kerala Congress (M) for its analysis of declarations made by candidates.

Out of 326 candidates fielded by the six parties in Kerala, 235 or 72% of them declared they were fighting criminal cases, and 113 or 35% said they had been slapped with serious criminal cases.

The ADR report named Najeeb Kanthapuram (IUML), P Balachandran (CPI) and Anad Jayan (Congress) as the top three candidates fighting the highest number of criminal cases.

In Tamil Nadu, 114 political parties contested the assembly polls, but the ADR picked up a dozen parties including the AIADMK, AMMK, DMK, BJP, CPI, CPI(M), Shiv Sena and Congress for its detailed analysis.

The ADR report has named CPI's Ramachandran T and S Gunasekaran, AMMK's S Rajanikanth as the top three candidates with the highest number of criminal cases.