The battle for Chief Minister seat in the Madhya Pradesh has begun in the state. Today, the assembly polls for 230 constituencies has begun and around five crore voters will decide the fate of 2,899 candidates.
Shockingly, out of the 2,716 nominees, there are over 750 candidates from various parties are having a criminal background and they are contesting for the assembly elections in MP this year, as per the analysis of the affidavits filed by them.
As per the reports of HT, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an NGO responsible for electoral and political reforms, and Madhya Pradesh Election Watch have also said that 464 candidates have been registered with criminal cases and 295 or 11 per cent candidates are registered with the serious criminal cases.
Earlier in 2013 elections, there were 407 candidates out of the 2,494 had declared with criminal background and 263 nominees had a record of serious criminal cases.
As per the report based on the analysis of the affidavits of 2,716 out of 2,899 nominees contesting the elections. The reports said that out of the 2,716 candidates, 685 are from national parties, 348 are from the state while around 668 candidates are from the unrecognised parties and 1015 are contesting independently.
It also added that the affidavits of 183 candidates have not analysed due to their document not scanned properly or due to incomplete documents uploaded on the website of EC.
Out of these, 16 candidates names are in the murder cases and 24 have declared cases related to attempt to murder. While some have registered with the case related to kidnapping like an abduction in order to murder or for wrong intentions.