Maharashtra: 27 ministers, 172 MLAs face criminal charges
An analysis of the affidavits filed by the 288 candidates, who fought the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections and became MLAs, reveals that 40 per cent of them are facing serious criminal charges.
As many as 27 ministers in the Maharashtra cabinet have criminal charges against them and 18 of them face serious criminal charges. (Representational Image)
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As many as 27 ministers in the Maharashtra cabinet have criminal charges against them and 18 of them face serious criminal charges. The Supreme Court on Thursday directed all political parties to upload reasons for selecting candidates with pending criminal cases on their websites.
An analysis of the affidavits filed by the 288 candidates, who fought the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections and became MLAs, reveals that 40 per cent of them are facing serious criminal charges, including murder, attempt to murder and kidnapping, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
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As many as 113 or 40 per cent have declared in their affidavits — filed with the Election Commission — that serious criminal cases have been registered against them. At the same time, 176 or 61 per cent of MLAs declared that criminal cases were pending against them.
The BJP, which is now the opposition party, has the highest number of MLAs with criminal cases registered against them. Of the 105 BJP MLAs, 65 have criminal cases pending against them.
For the Shiv Sena, 31 of the 56 MLAs face criminal charges. The NCP has 32 MLAs out of 54 facing criminal cases. Of the 44 Congress MLAs, 26 are facing criminal cases.Of the 12 independent MLAs, nine are facing criminal cases.
As many as, 40 BJP MLAs (38 per cent) are facing serious criminal cases. Twenty six from Shiv Sena (47 per cent), 17 from NCP (32 per cent), 15 from Congress (34 per cent) and six (50 per cent) independents are facing serious criminal cases.
The MPs who were elected to Lok Sabha from 48 seats in Maharashtra also have criminal cases registered against them. Thirteen of the 23 MPs in BJP face criminal charges, with six of them facing serious criminal charges like murder, attempt to murder, criminal intimidation and kidnapping.
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Of the Shiv Sena’s 18 MPs, 11 face criminal charges and five of them face serious criminal charges. Of the four NCP MPs, two are facing criminal charges. The Congress has only one MP who is facing criminal charges.
The AIMIM has one MP who is facing both criminal as well as serious criminal charges.
BJP spokesperson Madhav Bhandari said the party will follow the Supreme Court directives. “We will have to see the actual order and then comment, especially whether the apex court has sought reasons for selecting candidates with criminal backgrounds.”
Maharashtra Deputy Election Officer A N Valvi said they don’t collate the information. “If you want to know the criminal cases against MLAs, then you will have to check the affidavits filed by the candidates. We don’t keep the information in statistical form,” he said.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
