42% of Assembly Candidates in Haryana Are Crorepatis, 6% Have Serious Criminal Cases against Them

New Delhi: Over 1,100 candidates are in fray for the upcoming Haryana Assembly elections of whom 42 per cent or 481 are crorepatis.

Among them almost a third have assets worth over Rs 2 crore, an analysis of self-sworn election affidavits by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) shows.

While the absolute number of crorepati candidates in Haryana has increased when compared with the 2014 elections, their percentage as a share of total candidates has remained unchanged at 42 per cent.

A total of 1,169 individuals have filed their nominations of which the ADR has analysed affidavits of 1,138 candidates. These include 273 candidates from national parties, 142 candidates from state parties, 357 candidates from registered unrecognised parties and 366 Independents.

Among the major parties, 79 (91 per cent) of the 87 Congress candidates, 79 (89 per cent) of the 89 BJP nominees, 62 (71 per cent) of the 87 candidates from the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), 50 (63 per cent) of 80 INLD candidates and 34 (40 per cent) of the 86 BSP candidates have declared assets worth more than Rs 1 crore.

The average worth of assets per candidate in Haryana is Rs 4.31 crore, which is a slight decline from Rs 4.54 crore in 2014.

Rohtas Singh of the JJP, who is contesting from Sohna constituency, has the highest amount of declared assets at over Rs 325 crore, followed by Captain Abhimanyu (Narnaund constituency) of the BJP at Rs 170 crore and Sukhbir Kataria (Gurgaon constituency) of the Congress at Rs 106 crore.

While Manoj Singh, an Independent, has declared the lowest assets worth Rs 5,000 in Adampur, at least three candidates have declared zero assets which include two Independents and one candidate from the Republican Party of India (Athawale).

Criminal Cases

At least 117 or 10 per cent of the candidates have declared criminal cases against them, an increase of 3 percentage points compared to the previous Assembly elections. Among them, 70 candidates have serious criminal cases against them, including rape, criminal intimidation, attempt to murder and extortion, etc.

Candidates with serious criminal charges have seen an increase of one percentage point as a share of total candidates from 2014. However, the absolute number has remained the same at 70.

Party-wise, nine (11 per cent) BSP candidates, eight (9 per cent) Congress nominees, six (7 per cent) JJP candidates, five (6 per cent) from the INLD and one (1 per cent) BJP nominee have declared serious criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits.

Meanwhile, like 2014, only nine per cent of the total contesting candidates are women. Half of all the candidates have declared their educational qualification to be between class 5 and 12, while 43 per cent have qualification of ‘graduate or above’.