Battle of criminals in phase 7 of UP polls

The seventh and the final phase of assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh on May 8 will have the dubious distinction of having 162 candidates with criminal antecedents.

A total of 934 candidates are in the fray.

Altogether, 882 candidates of criminal antecedents are contesting in the 403-seat state assembly, with the maximum number of criminals in fray in the last phase.

UP Election Watch, a voluntary organisation, on Friday released the list of such candidates.

The ruling Samajwadi Party leads the list of criminals in Phase-VII with 32 criminal candidates out of the total 55 in fray, followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party-Apna Dal combine with 19 candidates, Bahujan Samaj Party (20) and the Congress 16.

Pawan Pandey of Apna Dal, contesting from Akbarpur seat, has 63 cases pending against him -- the highest among the criminals contesting in the entire UP assembly polls.

Former UP Director General of Police and Election Watch convenor I C Dwivedi said that taking into account all the seven phase elections in the state, major political parties account for 59 per cent of the candidates with criminal antecedents, while 22 per cent belong to other parties and 19 per cent are Independents.

Amongst the major political parties, ruling SP has the highest criminal candidates with 38 per cent followed by BSP 32 per cent, BJP and alliance 29 per cent, Congress 22 per cent and Rashtriya Lok Dal 14 per cent.

He pointed out that 51 candidates of phase-VII have declared their assets of more than Rs 1 crore and of them, seven do not even have PAN cards.