Assam polls: Decline in number of candidates with criminal records

GUWAHATI: There has been a decline of three per cent in the number of candidates with criminal records contesting Assam Assembly polls this year as compared to 2011 elections, an NGO said on the basis of self-sworn affidavits of the candidates.

Assam Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms, an NGO working in the area of electoral and political reforms, while analysing the self-sworn affidavits of 1,062 candidates contesting this year said 72 (seven per cent) of them had criminal records, whereas in 2011, 99 (10 per cent) of the 955 candidates had criminal records.

The comparison has been done to understand the trend of engagement of money and muscle power along with other details of the candidates, an official release said.

Another key finding of the analysis is that less number of candidates contested in the 2011 Assam Assembly election with serious criminal records compared to the election this year.

Now 57 (5 per cent) candidates with serious criminal records are contesting, whereas in 2011, total 37 (4 per cent) candidates with serious criminal record had contested, it said.

It was also found, the number of educated candidates has declined. In this Assembly election, 51 per cent of the contesting candidates are undergraduates, where as the number of undergraduates was 48 per cent in the 2011 election.