By TCN News,
New Delhi: Some 33% of ministers in poll-bound five states together had pending criminal cases when they contested their last elections. While 17 ministers had serious IPC charges like murder and attempt to murder, revealed ADR (Association for Democratic Reforms) in its latest report released on 10th January in New Delhi.
The report compares 5 states going to polls with respect to criminal and financial details of ministers, performance of the Assembly and the MLAs and analysis of state budgets.
ADR studied the previous affidavits of 100 ministers filed with the Election Commission of India during the previous Assembly elections or subsequent elections and Lok Sabha and analysed them.
Highlights on Ministers
— 33% ministers i.e. (33 out of 100 analyzed) have self-declared pending criminal charges as per their affidavits filed during previous Assembly Elections. 17 ministers out of these 100 analyzed have declared serious IPC charges like murder and attempt to murder pending against them.
— Uttar Pradesh has the maximum percentage of ministers (46%) with pending criminal cases (21 out of 46). Out of these 21, 14 (30%) ministers have serious criminal cases pending against them.
— A total of 41 ministers (i.e. 41% of the total analyzed) are crorepatis.
— Punjab has the highest crorepatis i.e. 83% in its Cabinet followed by Goa and Uttar Pradesh with 67% and 37% respectively.
— The average asset of a minister in the 5 states comes out to be 3.02 crores even though Manipur has no crorepatis in its Cabinet.
Highlights on performance of 5 Assemblies and MLAs
— Goa has the maximum average number of sittings/year (26) followed by Manipur (24) and UP (22).
— The least average number of sittings/year is for Punjab and Uttarakhand (19)
— The highest average attendance of MLAs is in the Uttarakhand Assembly (91%) followed by Punjab (71%) and Manipur (65%). Uttar Pradesh MLAs have the least average attendance (20%).
— This compares very poorly with the number of sittings of MPs in Lok Sabha. The current Lok Sabha in the last 2.5 years sat for 208 days which averages to about 77 days in a year.