Rs 4.30 Cr, the Average Wealth of Politicians with Criminal Charges

The ADR analysis also exposed that the criminal records of 4,181 repeat candidates shows that 1,072 of them had a criminal case the first time they contested an election and 788 had cases the second time too. This confirmed that political parties gave tickets to 74 percent of candidates who had criminal records the second time despite being aware of their criminal background.

For such candidates, re-contesting an election means increasing their wealth. Out of the 4,181 candidates who contested more than one election, 3,173 showed an increase in assets. On the other hand, the average assets of re-contesting candidates rose up to Rs 2.34 crore and the average assets of the 4,181 candidates with criminal record grew from Rs 1.74 crore to Rs 4.08 crore.

"This is clearly an abnormal increase in wealth," added Trilochan Sastry, the Founder of ADR and NEW.
75 percent of Shiv Sena legislators since the year 2004 have declared criminal cases against them, while 46 percent of Rashtriya Janata Dal and with 44 percent of Janata Dal (United) havesuch kind of candidates. The Bharatiya Janata Party and the ruling Congress party were at 31 percent and 22 percent respectively.

The country still faces a shortage of candidates with a clean background and so such a person has just 12 percent chance of winning an election whereas there is 23 percent chance of someone with serious criminal record winning an election.

The research was conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) based on the affidavit filed by the candidates during the Parliamentary and Assembly elections between 2004 and 2013.

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