Skip to main content
Source
Punjab Newsline Network
http://www.punjabnewsline.com/~punjabne/content/18-mlas-re-contesting-punjab-have-pending-criminal-cases-adr/35897
Author
Naresh Kumar Sharma
Date
City
Chandigarh
Among the 77 re-contesting MLAs in the Punjab Assembly elections to be held on January 30, 18 MLAs re-contesting have pending criminal cases and average growth in the assets of an MLA has been 6.1 crores with 5 MLAs declared average asset growth of more than 1000%.These revelations had been made by the Punjab Election Watch (PEW) and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) who analyzed the criminal and asset details of 77 MLAs re-contesting the 2012 Assembly Elections and compared them with available affidavits of 2007 Assembly elections.
 
The report details the criminal cases pending against them. Besides this, there are several cases of violent crimes like murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, robbery etc pending against the re-contesting MLAs in Punjab 2012 Assembly Elections. Since the judgment of the Supreme Court in 2003, ADR along with the National Election Watch has conducted Election Watches for the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha Elections, Rajya Sabha Elections and almost all state assembly elections post 2003 in the country. 
 
All the five states Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Goa had high fiscal deficits as per budget analysis of these states, done by the National Election Watch and the Association of Democratic Reforms. The ADR says that proper fiscal management has been found to be way below in priority with respective governments.
 
Punjab, which is regarded as prosperous state had cumulative revenue deficit of Rs.13,580 crore during 2005-2010. The elections in the five states will be held during January 28-March 3. The results will be out on March 6.
 
The political observes say that general good economics is not the major priority of governments due to which rising fiscal deficit has been a major problem. They said that with people becoming more aware, the political parties have to become more answerable to the voters