Rediff.com

Bangalore, May 16: The second phase of the elections in Karnataka gets underway on Friday and in fray are 49 candidates with criminal background.

A survey conducted by the Karnataka Election Watch, a non-governmental organisation, states that the Bharatiya Janata Party has the highest number of candidates with a criminal background.

The BJP tops the list with 13 while the Congress and the Janata Dal-Secular come second and third with 9 and 8 candidates respectively.

The Bahujan Samaj Party has seven such candidates while the other parties have 12.

It is also stated that six out of the 49 candidates have been charged for murder and attempt to murder while the rest of the cases range from cheating, assault etc.

All parties have shown a considerable reduction in the number of candidates with a criminal record. In the 2004 polls, the BJP, Congress and the JD-S had 21, 12 and 19 such candidates respectively.

Educational background:

It is also pointed out that in phase two 31 candidates are post graduates, 26 have technical degrees (like BE etc), 6 MBBS, 47 LLB, 97 graduates, 48 PUC, 49 matriculates, 35 non matriculates. The rest did not mention their educational qualifications.

Financial Record:

The total assets declared by all candidates considered by KEW for phase 2 of the elections was Rs.902 crore, with average candidates assets of Rs.2.42 crore.

The Congress led the parties with total declared candidate assets of Rs.470 crore and average candidate assets of Rs.7.35 crore.

The BJP had total assets of Rs.249.8 crore and average of Rs.3.78 crore, JD-S Rs.77.9 crore and Rs.1.28 crore, and BSP Rs.40.6 crores and Rs.0.64 crore.

Women Candidates:

There are 14 women candidates. The BJP has 2, BSP 4, INC 2, JDS 2, JDU 2 and others 2. In the first phase there were a total of 17 women candidates from the major parties. The total percentage of women is less than 5 per cent as in the first phase.