Thursday, April 03, 2014

Fifth of India's election candidates face criminal charges...

Almost a fifth of candidates in India's upcoming elections are facing criminal charges including rape, murder and extortion, according to research published on Wednesday.

The analysis of the records of 1,492 candidates contesting more than 120 seats in the country's 545-seat lower house will provoke further concern about the"criminalisation" of politics in the world's biggest democracy.

The first of 815 million eligible voters will go to the polls on Monday. The election – phased over six weeks to allow successive redeployment of security personnel – has been described by analysts as the most important for decades.

It pits the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, prime ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), against Rahul Gandhi, the 43-year-old scion of the country's most famous political dynasty and the face of the Congress party, which is seeking a third term in power. A series of polls have put Modi and the BJP ahead.

The charges study was released by the thinktank the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADF), and were based on electoral declarations filed by the candidates. Full story...

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