ADR Report: 35% of MLAs from UP are convicted

Lucknow : Tuesday 23 November 2003 - The Association for Democratic Reforms released on Tuesday a comprehensive survey of the 396 current legislators of Uttar Pradesh Assembly, which has 403 members.

Out of the 304 MLAs in question, 77 are facing criminal charges, and 18 from the 49-member Samajwadi Party fall under the same heading.Bahujan Samaj Party has 18 members.The Congress only has one.Further, the report states that 313 of 396 legislators are crorepatis.With a total of 304 MLAs the BJP has 235 millionpatis.

The SP, with its 49 MLAs has 42 crorepatis.BSP boasts 15 crorepatis, while Congress only has five.BSPs richest legislators are Guddu Jamali (Azamgarh) and Vinay Tiwari (Gorakhpur).

Two BJP MLAs who were ministers are still obligated to pay back loans.These are Siddhartha Nath and Nand Gopal Nandi.Ajay Kumar Lallu, Dhananjay, and Vijay Rajbhar are the low-asset MLAs.95 of the 396 MLAs havent completed higher than class 12.Five MLAs have diplomas, while four are only literate.Nearly 206 of the MLAs fall within the 25- to 50 year age range, while only 190 between 51 and 80.Santosh Srivastava, ADR Coordinator, stated that the survey was done ahead of the Assembly Elections to allow the citizens to know their legislators.He said that although surveys are normally done before elections, they are phased so this time it was comprehensive.amita/shb #MLAs.