Beware! You may just vote in a criminal

Criminalisation of politics has been a fact of Indian life. Every party — national, regional or local — has criminals amongst its ranks.
Parties shamelessly field them and, even more depressingly, we elect them. The criminals end up making laws for the country.

According to the National Election Watch (NEW), an umbrella organisation of more than 1,200 NGOs, a majority of political parties continue to field the candidates with criminal background. They continue to ignore repeated citizens’ demand for cleaner candidates. NEW is known for its public interest litigation on which Supreme Court on March 13, 2003, made disclosure of criminal, educational and financial background of candidates mandatory.

The NEW’s Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has so far done a detailed analysis of 880 candidates in Maharashtra out of total 3,559 in the fray on the basis of affidavits filed by them along with nomination papers. Among them, 31% i.e. 276 candidates were found to have several offences registered against them.