45% Cong MPs are millionaires, says study

Over 50 per cent of the members of Parliament have assets of over Rs 50 lakh each, with an MP, on an average, possessing declared assets worth over Rs 1.64 crore, according to a study by a non-government organisation, which says Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand account for over 50 per cent of all Lok Sabha members with criminal cases.

As a group, the MPs have total assets valued at Rs 878 crore, excluding the cars for which no value is given, and the Congress has the largest proportion of crorepati MPs (45 per cent), with their members accounting for more than 50 per cent of the assets of all the MPs, says the study.

One would think that the less educated would also lag behind in money power, but "that is not how it is in the world of MPs", the study conducted by Samuel Paul and M Vivekananda of the Bangalore-based Public Affairs Centre says.

The study, released to the press, was done by analysing the data from the affidavits of 541 MPs, who were elected to the Lok Sabha, filed during the elections.

Of the 132 MPs, who were undergraduates and below, over 30 per cent had criminal cases against them compared to 21 per cent for the rest and their average value of assets was close to Rs 2 crore each compared to Rs 1.4 crore for the more educated, it said.

Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand accounted for over 50 per cent of all MPs with criminal cases that could attract severe penalties of five years imprisonment or more, while their counterparts from Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttaranchal and J&K had no such criminal cases against them, it said.

"There is a concentration of criminally charged MPs in a few states. It is not fair to paint all states and regions with the same brush," the study said.

Over 27 per cent of the MPs were crorepatis and only one in 10 had reported assets below Rs 10 lakh, said the study.