70% MLAs crorepati, 56% with criminal cases: An analysis of the outgoing Telangana Assembly

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Telangana, the youngest state of India, is getting ready to witness its first independent Assembly elections on December 7.

On September 6, this year, the then chief minister Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao (now designated as the caretaker CM) dissolved the Assembly, paving way for the early elections.

Counting of votes will happen along with Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan on December 11.

As the state is ready to elect a new government, take a look at an analysis on sitting MLAs based on their financial assets, criminal cases, educational qualifications and gender representation, published by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

Out of the 119 MLAs elected to the Assembly in 2014, 83 were crorepati, says the ADR report, compiled on the basis of election affidavits filed by these MLAs.

Going party-wise, the data reveals that Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) had 41 crorepatis out of 63 elected legislators. For Congress it was 17 out 21 winning MLAs, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) 13 out of 15; All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) 5 out of 7; and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 3 out of 5; and rest were either independent or from other contesting parties.

In 2014, a total of 67 MLAs with criminal cases against them were elected to the Assembly. This ran through party lines. This makes up around 56 percent of all the legislators.

In the Telangana state, only eight percent of legislators are female. This means out of 119 MLAs, 100 are men while only nine are women.

Among the nine women MLAs, six came from the TRS while three came from the Congress.

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