In flagrant disregard for Supreme Court guidelines on fielding candidates with criminal record, over 70 per cent of the contestants in the third phase of polls belonging to the three major political parties in Bihar – RJD, BJP and Congress — have criminal cases against them, said a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and the National Election Watch.

Track record

In the RJD, 32 of the 44 or 73 per cent of the candidates in the third phase have criminal cases; 76 per cent candidates from the BJP have criminal records; and the Congress has as many..

Simultaneously, giving details of 201 candidates who are sitting MLAs in all the three phases, the ADR said their assets have almost doubled since their last election in 2015.

In 2015, the average assets of these MLAs was ₹2.85 crore whereas their average assets as declared in their elections affidavits this time round, is ₹4.85 crore. “Their assets have nearly doubled in the last five years,” said Head of the ADR Major General (Retd) Anil Verma. Of the total 1,195 candidates surveyed, 361 or 30 per cent are “crorepatis”.

The candidate with highest declared assets, BK Singh from Warisnagar, belongs to RJD and has declared assets of ₹85.89 crore. It is a relatively “young election in Bihar with as many as 42 per cent of the candidates being between the age of 25-40. About 48 per cent of the candidates are in the age group of 41 to 60 years while 11 per cent are between 61-80 years. Two candidates declared their age to be above 80.

Women, education

The representation of women is still way too short with only ten per cent of the candidates being women.

So far as the educational qualifications go, 41 per cent of the candidates have studied till either primary or secondary level school while 48 per cent are graduates and above. There are as many as 322 among a total of about 3,700 candidates who are “literate” and 15 who are totally illiterate.

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