New Delhi, March 10 (IANS) A grouping of volunatry organisations has put 20 Lok Sabha constituencies on its “red alert” and demanded “clean candidates” for these select seats across the country.
The criminal background of their outgoing parliamentarians makes these “red alert” seats, National Election Watch, an initiative of a large number of voluntary organisations, said and demanded “clean candidates” to reprersent them as a part of the decriminalisation of politics.
The National Election Watch represents more than 1,200 NGOs and other citizen-led organisations working on electoral reforms, improving democracy and governance in India. The 20 constituencies it has listed are the worst affected by criminalisation of politics as represented in the outgoing parliament, it said in a report released Monday.
The list includes only those constituencies where the elected MPs have criminal charges of serious nature like murder, attempt to murder, extortion, rape, kidnapping, robbery and dacoity.
It names MPs from across India and from most major parties. The maximum number of constituencies in the list are from the state of Bihar (five) followed by Uttar Pradesh (four).
It has three MPs from West Bengal, two from Madhya Pradesh and one each from Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
The Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) have three MPs each in this list.
The Samajwadi Party, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), Bahujan Samaj Party and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) have two MPs each while Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), Communist Party of India (CPI), and DMK have one MP each in the list.