Fifty of 58 new Rajya Sabha members are crorepatis

NEW DELHI: The 58 new Rajya Sabha members may not be too worried about their salary with 86% or 50 of them being crorepatis with average assets of Rs 44.74 crore, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

This is higher than 67% crorepatis in Rajya Sabha in 2013 where 153 of the 227 members had assets of over a crore and the current Lok Sabha that boasts of 315 or 58% crorepatis.

ADR had analyzed data from the self-sworn affidavits of 58 new and re-contesting members of the Upper House.

Among the national parties, the average assets per candidate is highest for BJP at Rs 85.36 crore followed by Congress with Rs 42.32 crore, NCP with Rs 23.02 crore and CPM with Rs 21.99 lakh. Six independent candidates have average assets of Rs 110.68 crore.

The richest RS candidate is BJP's Ravindra Kishore Sinha from Bihar who has declared assets worth Rs 857.11 crore followed by Kakde Sanjay Dattatraya, independent candidate from Maharashtra with declared assets of Rs 425.65 crore and T Subbarami Reddy of Congress from Andhra Pradesh with declared assets of Rs 422.44 crore.

The poorest candidates were Trinamool's Ahmed Hassan from West Bengal with assets of Rs 4.04 lakh followed by Ratabrata Banerjee of CPM from West Bengal with assets of Rs 9.42 lakh and Haji Abdul Salam of Congress from Manipur with declared assets of Rs 25.23 lakh.

Among the new candidates, 14 (24%) have criminal cases while two have serious criminal charges pending against them. BJP fielded the highest number of criminal candidates with four while Congress had three.



Rich parliamentarians

Lok Sabha 2009: 315 out of 543—58%

Rajya Sabha 2013: 153 out of 227—67%

RS 2014 (new members): 50 out of 58—86%

The data is based on ADR's analysis and TOI has not independently verified the information.