New Delhi: A report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on Friday revealed that 94 MLAs have declared criminal cases against themselves while a whopping 187 of the 230 MLAs are multi-millionaires in the newly-elected Madhya Pradesh Assembly. The grand old party, which registered thumping victory in the Assembly elections 2018, leads the list with 56 MLAs having criminal antecedents, followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with 34 while the Bahujan Samaj Party has two such lawmakers.

Out of the 94 MLAs with criminal cases, 47 face serious charges with six of them facing charges of attempt to murder, three facing charges of crime against women and one for murder. Coming to the financial front, 187 of the lawmakers are multi-millionaires with the BJP leading the pack with 109 such MLAs followed by the Congress with 90.

The report claimed that BJP’s Sanjay Satyendra Pathak from Vijayragahvgarh constituency in Katni district is the richest MLA with assets over Rs 226 crore, followed by fellow party lawmaker Chetanya Kasyap from Ratlam City with properties over Rs 204 crore.

Similarly in Rajasthan, nearly 46 or 23 per cent newly elected MLAs  have declared criminal cases against themselves, with 28 facing serious criminal cases including charges related to murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping. Congress MLA Parsadi Lal from Lalsot constituency has declared one charge related to murder, while four others, all from Congress, have declared cases related to attempt to murder.

As per the report, the Congress has 25 (25 per cent) of its 99 MLAs, who has declared criminal cases against themselves, BJP has 12 (16 per cent) of its 73 MLAs and the BSP has two (33 per cent) of its six MLAs with declared criminal cases.

Similarly, the Congress has 16 (16 per cent) MLAs, BJP has seven (10 per cent) and BSP two (33 per cent), who declared serious criminal cases against themselves.

Meanwhile, 158 (79 per cent) of newly elected MLAs are ‘crorepatis’ compared to 145 (73 per cent) in 2013.
As many as 82 MLAs from Congress, 58 from BJP, 11 independent and five from BSP have declared assets valued more than Rs 1 crore.

As per the report, the average of asset per MLA in the new Rajasthan Assembly is Rs 7.39 crore. In 2013, the average assets of 199 MLAs analysed was Rs 5.81 crore. Two MLAs, however, did not declared their source of income.

About 59 (30 per cent) MLAs have declared their educational qualification to be between 5th pass and 12th pass while 129 (65 per cent) MLAs have declared having an educational qualification of graduate or above. There are seven MLAs who have declared themselves to be just literate.