The Hindu : Other States / Maharashtra News : Cases pending against many candidates

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Oct 05, 2004

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Cases pending against many candidates

By Kalpana Sharma

MUMBAI, OCT. 4. Over 22 per cent of the candidates for the coming Assembly elections in Maharashtra have criminal cases pending against them. This is one of the startling findings of an analysis of affidavits filed by 1,625 of the 2,678 candidates contesting this election. The analysis has been done by the Maharashtra Election Watch (MEW).

Only affidavits filed by candidates of political parties were analysed due to shortage of time, clarified Ajit Ranade of MEW. The most significant fact was the large number of candidates — 366 in all — who had criminal charges under various sections of the Indian Penal Code pending against them. The number of cases ranged from 1 to 22. The BJP candidate from Chandrapur, for instance, had 22 cases pending against him while there were several more with over a dozen cases.

The party hosting the largest number of such candidates was the Shiv Sena. Fifty six per cent of Shiv Sena candidates had criminal cases followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, 41.4, the Nationalist Congress Party, 25, the Congress, 19 and the Bahujan Samaj Party with 15 per cent. Compared to corresponding data from the recent Lok Sabha elections, these percentages were higher, the report pointed out.

'Crore-patis' but no PAN

The candidates were not just implicated in criminal cases but a large number of them were "crore-patis", with declared assets exceeding Rs. 1 crore. There were 200 such individuals from all political parties and their assets ranged from Rs. 1 to 100 crores. At the same time, there was the strange case of 100 candidates who declared they had no assets at all.

While ordinary people are expected to have a Permanent Account Number (PAN) for tax purposes, 54 candidates with assets of over Rs. 1 crore had no PAN number and altogether 1,062 out of the 1,625 candidates whose affidavits were analysed, that is 64 per cent, did not have a PAN number.

In terms of age, the BSP had the youngest average age for its candidates, 42 while the NCP had the oldest, 49.5 years.

Need for new law

Speaking at the release function of the MEW report, Justice Chandrasekhar Dharmadhikari, retired from the Bombay High Court, said that the law needed to be changed so that those filing false affidavits could be disqualified under the Representation of the People Act.

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