Guwahati: There has been a decline of 3% in the number of candidates with criminal records contesting Assam Assembly polls in 2016 as compared to 2011 elections, an NGO said on the basis of self-sworn affidavits of the candidates.
Assam Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms, an NGO working in the area of electoral and political reforms, while analysing the self-sworn affidavits of 1,062 candidates contesting in 2016 said 72 (7%) of them had criminal records, whereas in 2011, 99 (10%) of the 955 candidates had criminal records.
The comparison has been done to understand the trend of engagement of money and muscle power along with other details of the candidates, an official release said.
Another key finding of the analysis is that less number of candidates contested in the 2011 Assam Assembly election with serious criminal records compared to the election in 2016.
Now 57 (5%) candidates with serious criminal records are contesting, whereas in 2011, total 37 (4%) candidates with serious criminal record had contested, it said.
It was also found, the number of educated candidates has declined. In this Assembly election, 51% of the contesting candidates are undergraduates, where as the number of undergraduates was 48% in the 2011 election.
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