Over half of Maharashtra MLAs have criminal cases

New Delhi (IANS): More than half of the sitting MLAs in Maharashtra have declared criminal cases against themselves, as per an analysis by Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Maharashtra Election Watch (MEW).

Of 275 sitting legislators analysed, 158 MLAs (58 percent) have declared criminal cases against themselves. ADR and MEW have analysed the criminal, financial and other background details of 275 of 287 sitting MLAs

Of these MLAs, 110 (40 percent) MLAs have declared serious criminal cases, three MLAs have declared cases related to the murder and 14 MLAs have declared cases related to attempt to murder.

Coming to the party wise break up of criminal cases against MLAs, 72 or (62 per cent) out of 117 MLAs are from BJP, 46 (75 percent) out of 61 MLAs belong to Shiv Sena, 14 (35 percent) of 40 MLAs are from Congress and 4 (67 percent) out of 6 Independent MLAs have criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits.

A huge chunk of legislators are in the eight figure bracket. Of 275 sitting MLAs analysed, 239 (87 percent) are crorepatis.

The party-wise crorepati MLAs include 99 (85 percent) of 117 MLAs from BJP, 51(84 percent) out of 61 MLAs from Shiv Sena, 37 (95 percent) of 39 MLAs from NCP, 36 (90 percent) out of 40 MLAs from Congress and 5 (83 percent) out of 6 Independent MLAs have declared assets valued more than Rs 1 crore.

The average assets per MLA for BJP MLAs is Rs 11.45 crore, Shiv Sena MLAs is Rs 6.83 crore, Congress MLAs is Rs 8.36 crore, 39 NCP MLAs is Rs 10.56 crore and 6 Independent MLAs have average assets of Rs 12.80 crore.

The top three MLAs with highest assets are BJP's Mangal Prabhat Lodha from Malabar Hill constituency in Mumbai with total assets of Rs 198 crore, Abu Azmi of the Samajwadi Party from Mumbai with total assets of Rs 156 crore and BJP's Jagdish Tukaram Mulik from Pune with assets of Rs 104 crore.