Barely a few days ahead of the parliamentary elections in four constituencies in Jharkhand, independent watchdog — Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) — released vital statistics related to sitting MPs from the State besides those in the poll fray.
The report card generated after extensive field survey and the affidavits submitted by candidates made some startling revelations about candidates and their acceptance among electorates, the ADR stated.
Interestingly, the survey talks about people preferred to ignore a candidate’s criminal antecedents on account of “good works” done by such candidates in respective constituencies. As per the survey report, around 78 per cent of the people surveyed preferred the ‘Robin Hoods’ of their constituency for the supposed good work done.
However, the bizarre finding by the watchdog was eclipsed to some extent by the caste factor. Around 22 per cent people in Jharkhand vote for criminal candidates because of affiliation to their caste while 43.86 believe that the charges are not abhorrent enough to be discouraged from voting.
Notably, the survey was conducted in all Assembly Constituencies across Jharkhand and recorded responses of 400 to 700 people in every constituency. The survey contained questionnaires on as many as 30 indicators and was completed by the end of January 2014.
Incidentally, the survey in Jharkhand was part of the pan-India survey conducted by ADR to ascertain candidate’s preference, voting pattern, people’s expectation and a sitting MPs performance vis-a-vis the expectations.
Even as entire nation is talking about who will be the next PM of India and to the extent they can pull votes for their respective candidates, voting behaviour of electorates in Jharkhand accorded primacy to a candidate contesting election rather than who is the PM candidate. The survey depicts that 7.08 per cent of electorates in Jharkhand keep a candidate in mind compared to 6.77 per cent who vote with the PM candidate in mind.
Significantly, as many 14 MPs were rated for their performance since they were elected by people and the average rating for state based MPs stood at 5.43 with only three MPs with above average performance in last five years.
The three BJP’s sitting MPs— lohardaga MP Sudarshan Bhagat (7.15), Dhanbad MP P N Singh (6.80) and Godda MP Nishikant Dubey (6.78) — were above the average score for people’s representative in the lower House of the parliament.
It may be called an irony that sitting Ranchi MP scored less than tainted former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda on the parameter set by the independent agency. While Sahay scored 4.18 on a scale of 10 the sitting MP from Singhbhum was tad better with 4.27 on the scale of 10.