Assembly elections in Bihar look set to be a mob war of sorts for political fiefdom. Neraly half of the candidates - who have disclosed relevant data - have criminal backgrounds, some with cases pending.

Of the 183 on whom such data is available, 80 are have been accused of anything from extortion to murder. A report brought out by the Association for Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch reveals that most political parties have fielded candidates with criminal records.

The Bharatiya Janata Party leads the gang with 41 of 87 candidates fielded being tainted by crime. The nominee from Chanpatia, West Champaran, Satish Chandra Dubey, has 13 cases of murder, theft, extortion against him.

Not far behind is Lok Janshakti Party (LJP)with 8of 38 candidates with criminal charges against them. Shankar Singh, the candidate from Rupali, Purnea does the rounds of courts in 36 different cases.

33 percent of candidates from JD(U), 31 percent from Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and 24 percent candidates from the Congress were found to have pending criminal cases against them. 

The report also said that several of these charges are serious, like murder, criminal intimidation, assault, wrongful restraint, etc.

The analysis is done on the data collected from the 2005 election.

“The effort to rid the election arena of criminal elements has to start with political parties first and this they can do by denying tickets to aspirants with criminal record. To the extent they fail to do that they are merely shirking their responsibility and betraying the Nation,” said N. Gopalaswami, former CEC and a member of National Election Watch (NEW).

Suresh Kumar Sinha, retired judge of Patna High Court and a member of NEW asked, “How will the law and order situation improve if there are these candidates that will sit in our Vidhan Sabha? People today are looking for clean, honest and capable candidates, the parties are betraying people’s trust.”

The six-phase elections in 243-member Legislative Assembly in Bihar are scheduled from October 21.