Congress MP Birender Singh’s controversial remark that Rs 100 crore is required to get elected as a Rajya Sabha member might have drawn criticism from the Opposition BJP, but the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) said that he has validated the data collected by it which shows the growing role of money and muscle power in politics.
“Once someone told me that he had a budget of Rs 100 crore to become a Rajya Sabha MP. But when he totalled the expenditure later, he found it was Rs 80 crore and he had ended up saving Rs 20 crore,” Singh had said on Sunday.
But faced with severe criticism from BJP leader Prakash Javadekar that Singh must be giving his own example and that the Congress was in the habit of “cutting out deals” and having brought politics in the country to such a “low level”, Singh went into damage control. He blamed the media for distorting his remark and giving an “entirely wrong version” of what he had said. Singh claimed that he wanted to highlight how money power is becoming more important in Parliamentary democracy.
Though BJP and Indian National lok Dal flayed Singh and sought answers from the Congress, ADR released data supporting the Congress MP’s remark. Pointing out that 40 of the 232 sitting Rajya Sabha MPs face criminal cases, it said that such criminal MPs constitute 17 per cent of the strength of the House and 16 of them face serious criminal cases.
After analysing affidavits submitted by MPs and MlAs submitted to the Election Commission, ADR found that even lok Sabha is full of MPs with a criminal background as 162 of the 534 lok Sabha MPs face criminal cases constituting 30 per cent of the strength of the House. As many 76 sitting MPs (14 per cent) have declared facing serious criminal cases.
“It is clear that crorepatis in Rajya Sabha and lok Sabha are increasing these days which has been validated by our data also. The reason for which the Rajya Sabha was constituted that it will be a House of elders of respected people who cannot fight costly elections, it has failed to achieve. Now businessmen and people with criminal background are entering the Rajya Sabha,” said Anil Bairwal, National Coordinator of ADR.
This was clear from that fact that while the average asset declared by 8790 MPs and MlAs whose affidavit was analysed showed that they had average asset of 3.83 crores those having criminal background had more assets. 2575 MPs/MlAs with criminal cases had declared average asset of Rs 4.30 crore which was further more for 1,187 facing serious charges at Rs 4.38 crore.
Significantly, the chance of winning an election also increases for those having criminal background. A candidate contesting on a party ticket generally has 12 per cent chances of winning in election but for those having criminal record it was found to be 23 per cent, he pointed out.