HYDERABAD: As many as 226 of 360 candidates contesting in the Telangana Assembly elections on behalf of various political parties including Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), Indian National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) have criminal antecedents. Overall, they have 1,210 criminal cases registered against them.
The Congress has fielded 84 (71%) candidates who are facing 540 criminal cases followed by the BJP with 78 candidates (70 percent) facing 549 cases, BRS with 58 candidates (48 percent) facing 120 criminal cases and MIM has fielded six candidates from 12 constituencies (50 percent) having 12 criminal cases.
TPCC president A Revanth Reddy and T Raja Raja Singh of the BJP have the highest number of 89 cases registered against them each followed by Bandi Sanjay Kumar (BJP) 59, Soyam Bapu Rao (BJP) 55 and Vedma Bhojju (INC) 52 cases.
BRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has nine cases registered against him mostly during the Telangana agitation followed by ministers K T Rama Rao (8), T Harish Rao (3), Gangula Kamlakar (10), and others.
’If all the candidates having criminal cases are elected, the Telangana Assembly will be full of people with a criminal background which is not good for democracy,” said Forum for Good Governance (FGG) president M Padmanabha Reddy and urged the people to exercise their franchise with caution if they want a clean government.
He said that FGG has collected the data pertaining to the criminal antecedents of the candidates. The data was analyzed by a committee and the same was released to the media on Tuesday. “There are candidates who are facing cases for participating in the Telangana movement and violation of the code of conduct,” he said.
However, there were no serious charges like murders or rape cases. The cases that were registered related to land grabbing, cheating, frivolous cases like not printing the names on pamphlets and others, he added. Padmanabha Reddy said that political parties gave tickets to winnable candidates irrespective of their criminal history. “This is not good for democracy. The trend of giving party tickets to criminals has increased manifolds over the past 20 years,” he observed.
In this connection, the Supreme Court has directed that political parties not to allot tickets to people with criminal records unless it is unavoidable but the parties should explain the reasons. The court further stated that the parties should publish in the paper the criminal record of the candidate to whom they have given the tickets.