The percentage of poll winners having criminal cases pending against them was higher than those with clean records in the national and state level elections held between 2004 and 2014.
The Supreme Court Tuesday noted that this disturbing data was revealed in a report of the Law Commission, which has been submitted before it.
The apex court, which pronounced its verdict on the issue of criminalisation of politics, stated that the data in the Law Commission's 244th report revealed that while only 12 per cent of candidates with a "clean" record won on an average, 23 per cent of candidates with some kind of criminal record win, which implied that the candidates charged with a crime actually fared better in the elections than "clean" candidates.
A five-judge constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, referred to the report which also said that not only do political parties select candidates with criminal background, there was also evidence to suggest that untainted representatives later became involved in criminal activities.
Among the states, in Uttar Pradesh, 47 per cent of the MLAs had criminal cases pending and a number of these lawmakers have been accused of multiple criminal charges, the top court said referring to the report.
The report said that in one constituency of Uttar Pradesh, one of the MLAs had 36 criminal cases pending, including 14 cases relating to murder.
It said that this had resulted in the tendency that candidates having criminal cases were given tickets a second time, the top court noted.
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According to the report, during the 2004-2014 period, 18 per cent (11,063 out of 62,847 candidates) of the candidates contesting either national or state elections had criminal cases pending against them.
In 5,253 (or about half of the cases), the charges were of serious criminal offences such as murder, attempt to murder, rape, crimes against women, corruption cases or cases under organised crime and terrorism, which, on conviction, would result in five or more years of imprisonment.
The report showed that 1,187 of the 5,253 candidates with serious criminal charges, went on to win the elections they contested, which was 13.5 per cent of the 8,882 winners analysed by the commission from 2004 to 2013.
The commission said that a total of 2,497 candidates (or 28.4 per cent of the winners) had 9,993 pending criminal cases, serious and non-serious, against them.
According to the report, in the current Lok Sabha, 162 sitting MPs had criminal cases pending against them, of which about half (76) had serious criminal cases.
Further, the prevalence of MPs with pending criminal cases had increased over time, for in 2004, 24 per cent had pending criminal cases which increased to 30 per cent in the 2009 elections, the report said.
It said this situation was similar across states with 31 per cent or 1,258 out of 4,032 sitting MLAs with pending cases being serious cases.
The report 152 candidates had 10 or more serious cases pending, 14 candidates had 40 or more such cases and five candidates had 50 or more cases against them.
The commission had also observed that the 5,253 candidates with serious cases together had 13,984 serious charges against them.
It said that 31 per cent were cases of murder and other murder related offences, 4 per cent were cases of rape and offences against women, 7 per cent were of kidnapping, 7 per cent were of robbery, 14 per cent related to forgery and counterfeiting including of government seals and 5 per cent related to breaking the law during elections.