CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu has the second highest number of MLAs with declared cases pertaining to electoral malpractice among the Southern States, according to a study released by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on Thursday.
While Karnataka, which tops the table, has 20 MLAs, Tamil Nadu has 11 MLAs with cases registered under section 171 IPC. Four out them are from the ruling AIADMK. Five are from DMK and two are from the Congress.
Congress’s JG Prince of from Colachel constituency and DMK’s PK Sekar Babu from Harbour constituency even have murder charges against them. The six southern States have 44 of the total 128 MLAs in the country.
Electoral expenditure less than half the limit
The study by ADR also looks at the election expenditure declared by MLAs. On average, MLAs from Tamil Nadu have declared the second highest election expenditures in the southern region. However, the mean `13.36 lakh is barely 50 per cent of the mandated expenditure limit of `28 lakh.
Even Kerala, which shows the highest mean election expenditure of MLAs - `19.6 lakh - is just at 70 per cent of the expenditure limit.
“On an average, MLAs in Tamil Nadu are claiming to have spent less than half of the mandated `28 lakh for election expenditure when the IT department estimated around `89 crore was used to buy voters in RK Nagar bypoll,” said Jayaram Venkatesan, convenor of Arappor Iyakkam.
Average vote share a mere 44.37 pc
The study which also looks at vote share of MLAs found that on an average MLAs from none of the six Southern States enjoyed more than 50 per cent vote share in their constituency.
Tamil Nadu MLAs on an average have the second least vote share with only 44.37 per cent. Andhra Pradesh, which is at the top has an average MLA vote share of 49.96 per cent.
Interestingly, 41 of the 44 MLAs with electoral malpractices cases received a vote share above 40 percent.
“Looks like the Thirumangalam formula is more widespread than we expected,” said Sudarshan Padmanabhan, trustee of ADR, hinting that most of the money used in election campaigns is unaccounted.