President of India to Be Elected by Tainted MPs

Bangalore: The next President of India will be chosen by the Electoral College which consists of 141 murder accused, six alleged rapists and 90 members charged with kidnapping.

As people’s representatives are set to elect a new president soon, data compiled by a think tank shows nearly a third of the Electoral College which will vote in the 19 July polls have criminal cases like attempt to murder, kidnapping and theft, pending against them.

The Electoral College that elects the president consists of elected members of parliament (MPs) – of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha – and members of legislative assemblies (MLAs) from all states.

According to data collected by think tank National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Research, of a total 4,835 MPs and MLAs who will be voting in this election, 1,448 have in their own election affidavits declared that criminal cases are pending against them.

These tainted MPs and MLAs represent nearly 31 percent of the vote share.

Based on the number of votes that these tainted MPs/MLAs are entitled to cast, it was noted that a total of 3,35,089 votes out of 10,89,287 analyzed are of MPs/MLAs who have declared criminal cases against themselves on self-sworn affidavits submitted to the ECI at the time of filing their nomination papers for elections.

(with agency inputs)