New Delhi: A whopping 570 candidates out of a total 1,612, who are contesting in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections, have declared criminal cases against them, according to Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) data published Friday.
The ADR data was published after screening the candidates’ self-sworn affidavits.
The data cites that among the major parties, 40 out of 90 Congress candidates and 38 out of 97 candidates of the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) have criminal cases amongst them. The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has the least number of candidates with criminal cases against them.
Fourteen candidates have declared that they have been convicted.
Thirteen candidates have declared murder cases against them, 29 have declared cases related to crime against women such as rape, assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty, husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty, against them.
Only 26 candidates have declared cases related to hate speech.
According to the data, 63 out of the 115 constituencies have been put in the “red alert” category, where three or more contesting candidates have declared criminal cases against themselves.
Apart from criminal cases, the affidavits of candidates were also screened on financial and education background.
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