Congress and BJP talk of clean politics, but field more criminals

NEW DELHI: Rahul Gandhi may have made promises about decriminalising politics and the BJP vowed to be cleaner than the Congress, but an analysis of the candidates put up by them in four of the five states seeing polls show both parties have failed to walk the talk.

For instance, the Congress in Madhya Pradesh has 22% of its candidates facing serious criminal charges compared with 15% in 2008. In the case of the BJP, 16% of its candidate list are people with serious criminal cases compared with 10% in 2008.

The analysis of self-sworn affidavits by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), an advocacy group for cleaner politics, further shows that in Rajasthan both Congress and BJP have registered a four and eight percentage point increase respectively in the number of candidates accused of serious criminal offences.

Rahul’s party hasn’t stuck to his ideals in Chhattisgarh as well, with 10% of Congress candidates facing serious criminal charges, up from 7% in 2008. Here, the BJP by comparison has fielded a smaller number of candidates with grave criminal charges – 3% compared with 6% in 2008.
But in Delhi, the BJP is leading with 32% of its candidates accused of committing serious crimes as opposed to 6 % in 2008. The Congress party follows with 11% of its candidate list falling in the serious offences category, which is five percentage points higher than the last elections.

According to Jagdeep Chhhokar of ADR, the presence of candidates with criminal cases only shows that there exists a lack of political will to reduce criminality in politics.