Odisha: 85 winning candidates in 2024 Assembly election have criminal cases: Report

Bhubaneswar: As many as 85 candidates elected to the 147-member Odisha Legislative Assembly in the 2024 election, have declared criminal cases pending against them, as per the Odisha Election Watch report.

The report, released to the press here on Friday, stated that 58 percent of the winning candidates have criminal cases against them. In the 2019 Assembly election, out of the 146 MLAs, 67 MLAs, constituting 46 percent, had declared criminal cases against them.

Out of the 85 winning candidates in the 2024 election who have criminal cases, 67 MLAs (46 percent) have declared serious criminal cases pending against them, the report said.

An analysis of the MLAs having criminal cases in the last four elections revealed that the number has gone up from 33 percent in 2009 to 35 percent in 2014, further increasing to 46 percent in the 2019 Assembly election and 58 percent in the 2024 Assembly election.

Similarly, the MLAs having serious criminal cases have also gone up from 21 percent in 2009 to 28 percent in 2014, which further went up to 34 percent in 2019 and 47 percent in the 2024 election.

The report said, on a party-wise basis, out of 78 MLAs elected from the BJP in the 2024 elections, 46 (59 percent) have criminal cases pending against them. While from the 51 BJD MLAs elected in the 2024 election, 15 MLAs (29 percent) have criminal cases pending against them, eleven of the 14 elected Congress MLAs have criminal cases.

The lone CPI(M) candidate and three independents who won the 2024 election have declared criminal cases pending against them.

As far as serious criminal cases are concerned, the BJP accounted for 46 MLAs (59 percent) from the elected 78 MLAs, while 12 elected MLAs from BJD and five of the 14 elected MLAs from Congress have declared serious criminal cases against them.

Altogether, 1285 candidates had contested the 2024 Assembly election in Odisha, of which 348 candidates have declared criminal cases against them.