An analysis of self-sworn affidavits of the candidates by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) has found that wealth of 317 candidates, who re-contested the elections, had grown by over 1,000 per cent.
Between 2004 and 2013, in 10 years, a total of 62,847 candidates contested either state or parliamentary elections and of them 4,181 candidates recontested elections.
"This is clearly an abnormal increase in wealth," said Trilochan Sastry, a Professor at IIM Bangalore and also the founder of ADR and NEW.
"When we filed an RTI with the Income Tax department asking about the actions taken by them against those people whose wealth has shown an abnormal increase. Their reply simply was that we have done the needful as per the laid down procedure," said Jagdeep Chhokar, a retired Professor of IIM Ahmedabad and founding member of ADR, NEW.
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It also came to light that 162 (about 30 per cent) out of the 543 Lok Sabha MPs have declared criminal cases against themselves, while 76 (14 per cent) of the current Lok Sabha MPs have declared serious criminal cases against themselves.
40 out of 232 (17 per cent) sitting MPs from Rajya Sabha have declared criminal cases against themselves while 16 (seven per cent) of the current Rajya Sabha MPs have declared serious criminal cases.
A total of 11,063 out of these 62,847 (18 per cent) candidates have declared criminal cases against themselves while 5,253 (eight per cent) out of the 11,063 candidates had declared serious criminal cases against themselves.
When it came to clean candidates contesting and winning the elections, it was found that there were only 12 per cent chance of them winning election, while there were 23 per cent chance of winning an election with serious criminal record.