In Wayanad Lok Sabha Constituency, BJP state chief K Surendran pitted against Congress MP Rahul Gandhi. The NDA candidate has 242 cases against him, and as a part of statutory requirements, Suremdran recently made the details of his cases public on three full pages.
In a similar case, BJP candidate K. S. Radhakrishnan, who has around 211 cashews against him, is running for the Ernakulam constituency.
“Most of the cases are related to the Sabarimala protests, which were held in 2018. Most of the cases are in court. When party leaders call for a strike or a protest, the police register a case in connection with that,” George Kurian, the state general secretary of the BJP, told PT, mentioning that it’s important to publish the details of the cases against the candidates.
On Friday, BJP national general secretary B L Santhosh tweeted details of the cases against Surendran, Radhakrishnan, the party’s Alappuzha candidate Shobha Surendran, and Vatakara candidate Praful Krishna and said it was “hard to be a nationalist in some parts of Bharath.”
The BJP state chief, Kurian, said 237 cases were related to Sabarimala protests, while five were registered in connection with various clashes in Kerala.
In 2018, the BJP and affiliated parties were the organizers of the protests that engulfed Kerala. The protests were against the Kerala government’s decision to implement the Supreme Court order on women’s entry to the hilltop Sabarimala shrine in Pathanamthitta district.
Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) Reports
According to an analysis by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), 225 sitting Lok Sabha MPs have crimninal cases against them, which makes up 44% of the total sitting.
As many as 149 sitting MPs declared serious criminal cases related to murder, attempts to murder, communal disharmony, kidnapping, and crimes against women against them, which is 29%.
The report also mentioned that among the 294 sitting BJP MPs analyzed, 118 (40%) declared criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits, while 87 (30%) declared serious criminal cases. 57% of sitting Congress MPs, or 26 out of 46 (30%), have been booked in criminal cases.
Fifty percent of MPs facing criminal charges belong to states, including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh.
