Captian Amarinder Singh, President PPCC, was the richest candidate in 2007 Vidhan Sabha elections with assets worth nearly Rs 38 crore.

Rana Rajbans Kaur, again Congress candidate from Kapurthala was number two while Ludhiana Congress MLA Jassi Khangura was number three with Rs 25 crore assets.

Punjab Election Watch (PEW) data of top ten candidates reveal this in which CM Parkash Singh Badal was tenth in 2007 Vidhan Sabha elections. Members of PEW, which is a part of National Election Watch (NEW), a nation wide group of more than 1,200 civil society organisations led by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) working as election watchdog to keep an eye on electoral malpractices and to make voters aware about the backgrounds of the candidates, released a voter awareness pamphlet here today.

In this pamphlet, details of top ten rich candidates, top five candidates with criminal background in 2007 elections is given apart from general questions and answers. However, this time the assets of candidates have increased a lot and even the number of crorepatis has increased.

Out of the top five candidates with criminal background, three were from SAD and two from Congress.

The PEW members have also given details about rule 49 (0) which empowers the voters to reject all the candidates.

PEW coordinator Jaskirat Singh said, “Voter awareness is one of the most important requirements today for a free, fair and informed elections.

While the election commission is doing an excellent job of keeping electoral malpractices under check, we are doing our bit to make voters aware through this pamphlet distribution at public places around Punjab.” 

Rajeev Gupta and Kuldeep Singh Khaira, members of Punjab Election Watch said, “We are distributing these pamphlets around the city at places like bus stand, near the PAU gate, outside colleges, etc. and we hope voters will find this information useful.”