90% of Telangana ministers face criminal charges

NEW DELHI: About 44 of the 194 state cabinet ministers from 13 assemblies (where elections were conducted in the last two years) and 12 out of 45 Union ministers have criminal cases pending against them.

The figures have been arrived at by the Association for Democratic Reforms and the National Election Watch which analysed the election affidavits of 239 of the 245 ministers.

In the states, 26 or 13% ministers have serious criminal charges, including rape, attempt to murder, kidnapping or electoral violations against them.

For instance, there are two ministers from BJP in the Rajasthan cabinet — Gulab Chand Kataria and Rajendra Rathore — with cases of murder pending against them. Odisha's Prafulla Kumar Mallik (BJD) also faces a kidnapping charge.





TDP's Ganta Srinivas Rao from Andhra and TRS ministers Thanneeru Harish Rao, Eatala Rajender and Guntakandla Jagadish Reddy from Telangana have declared that attempt to murder cases are pending against them.

Incidentally, Telangana has the highest percentage — 90 — of ministers facing criminal charges. India's newest state is followed by Andhra Pradesh, where more than half of the ministers have criminal cases (56%), followed by Karnataka (34%) and Odisha (27%).

In fact, the only two chief ministers who face criminal charges come from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh — K Chandrasekhar Rao and N Chandrababu Naidu.

States where no ministers face criminal charges include Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim.

States that were considered for the report include Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura and Telangana.