So, what kind of candidate did you vote for?

The 2014 elections in India have been far more aggressive than elections in the past and the language used in the campaigning has also been far more abusive. The choice of some of the candidates by major political parties has been astounding to say the least. The Congress brought back Ashok Chavan, the disgraced Chief Minister of Maharashtra. The BJP, not to be outdone, brought back BS Yeddyurappa  who resigned as Chief Minister of Karnataka on charges of corruption. Shockingly, the BJP also tried to sneak in Sri Ram Sene Chief Muthalik (him of the Mangalore pub attack fame)! One does begin to question the sanity of those who made the decisions to field such candidates.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (see here) has been doing a wonderful job collecting information on all the candidates in the 2014 Parliamentary elections. A wealth of data is available at a website managed by it (http://myneta.info/). This post is based on data available from this site.

I consider only three parties which have a national presence: AAP, BJP  and INC. Between them, they have put up 1315 candidates.

I first look at how educated are the candidates that have been put up by the three national parties:

At least 77% of AAP candidates are Graduates or more. Similarly percentage for BJP is 74% and for INC it is 81%. The level of education of the candidates seems uniformly high. It would be worth investigating if this percentage has improved over the past elections.

How rich are the candidates put up by the three national parties? Table below looks at the assets declared by the candidates.

 

[Note: 1 Lakh = Hundred thousand; 1 Crore = 10 million]

AAP is quite clearly the "poor" person's party: only 45% of its candidates have assets more than Rs. 1 crore; while the BJP has 73% such candidates and the INC 79%. In fact, the INC has 190 out of 462 (41%) candidates with assets worth more than Rs. 5 crore. Does being in power for 10 years create more wealth for INC members?

Finally, I look at candidates of the three parties who face charges of serious crimes. "Serious crime" is defined as:

1. Whether the maximum punishment for the offence committed is of 5 years or more?, or
2. Whether the offence is non-bailable?,or
3. Offences pertaining to the electoral violation (IPC 171E or bribery), or
4. Offence related to the loss to exchequer, or
5. Offences the nature of which are related to assault, murder, kidnap, rape, or
6. Offences that are mentioned in Representation of the People Act (Section 8), or
7. Offences under Prevention of Corruption Act, or
8. Offences related to the Crimes against women.

BJP accounted for the most number of serious crimes (46% of 191). Up to 5 serious crimes is the most significant category for all three parties: BJP accounts for 70 of these while the INC and AAP account for 53 and 35 respectively. 

Shockingly, AAP has two candidates with more than 25 charges of serious crimes. These two candidates are SP Udaykumar from Kanniyakumari constituency with 382 cases and M Pushparayan from Thoothukkudi with 380 charges. Incidentally, SP Udaykumar and M Pushparayan were part of  the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy which spearheaded the anti-Kudankulam campaign. Do the large number of cases against these two have something to do with the agitations they have been a part of?