Gandhinagar: Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) seem to be on parallel with one another when it comes to the fielding candidates with criminal cases against them. Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said in its report that out of the 90 Congress candidates fighting Phase-2 of Gujarat polls, 29 (32 per cent) have criminal cases against them. Similarly, out of the 93 candidates of Aam Aadmi Party, 29 (31 per cent) are having criminal cases. In comparison, only 18 of the 93 BJP candidates (19 per cent) have criminal backgrounds in the upcoming 2022 polls.

It is noteworthy, that in phase 2 of 2017 elections, 28% of congress candidates, 26 % of BJP candidates and 29% of AAP candidates had criminal history. The data that ADR has published shows that while Congress and Kejriwal led AAP handed more tickets to criminal candidates, BJP has demonstrated improvement by cutting down on giving ticket to person with criminal background form 26% to 18%.

According to the ADR study, 163 (20%) of the 833 candidates running in the Phase 2 elections have criminal records. 101 candidates (12%) in the 2017 elections had criminal records. The most candidates in Phase 1 with active criminal cases were also from the AAP.

DeshGujarat