The number of crorepatis in Madhya Pradesh Assembly has doubled this time while the figure for MLAs with serious criminal cases has increased by 66 per cent.

Interestingly, 77 of the 120 candidates with criminal cases fielded by the Congress, the BJP and the BSP lost in the elections in which the BJP romped home with 165 seats.

According to Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW), 73 of the 230 MLAs have declared criminal cases against them as against 58 in 2008. Of this, 45 MLAs have declared serious criminal cases like kidnapping, dacoity, extortion and assault against women etc against them as against 27 last time.

BJP has 29 MLAs with serious criminal cases while Congress has 13. Two MLAs have cases of crime against women against them while three have corruption cases against them.

While there were 87 crorepati MLAs, this time the Assembly will have 161 such lawmakers of which BJP has the highest number of 118. Forty of the 58 Congress MLAs are crorepatis. The average asset per MLA is Rs 5.24 crore, a rise from Rs 1.49 crore five years ago.

The average asset per MLA for BJP is Rs 4.61 crore and for the Congress it is Rs 7.11 crore. BSP MLAs have average assets of Rs 3.22 crore. Sanjay Pathak of the Congress with declared assets of Rs 121.32 crore is the wealthiest MLA followed by Chetan Kashyap of the BJP with assets worth Rs 120.29 crore.

Out of the 230 MLAs, only 30 (13 per cent) are women. In 2008 elections, 25 (11 per cent) women were elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly. As many as 155 MLAs are  graduates or above while 73 have educational qualification of 12th pass or below. Only 39 MLAs are aged 40 or less while 157 MLAs have declared their age to be between 41 and 60 years.