One in four candidates with registered criminal cases against them, and more than one in four crorepatis, won with a vote share of 50 per cent or more in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
An analysis by the Association of Democratic Reforms, released on Thursday, revealed that the greatest proportion of winners in the elections won with less than 50 per cent of the votes polled in their constituencies while the average vote share of the winners was 47 per cent. One-fourth of the candidates with criminal cases and slightly more with assets more than Rs 1 crore, however, beat that trend.
The winners of the previous Vidhan Sabha elections in 2017 had won by an average of 43 per cent of the total votes polled, four per cent less than what the winners got this time.
The highest vote share went to the BJP’s Pankaj Singh (son of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh) in Noida, who got 70.16 per cent of the votes polled. The lowest vote share for a winning candidate went to the SP’s Devendra Pratap Singh who got just 30.53 per cent of the votes polled.
Among the candidates who had declared criminal cases in their poll affidavits, the biggest winner was Amit Agarwal from the BJP who won from Meerut Cantt., with a 48 per cent margin of victory.
In 15 assembly constituencies, the margin of victory was very small, with the winner taking less than 1,000 votes more than the nearest rival.
Of the 205 candidates with criminal cases against their names, 78 won against a runner-up who had a 'clean' background. There were 366 crorepati candidates in the fray and of these, 49 won against a non-crorepati candidate.
Slightly above 11 per cent of the elected representatives are women. Of these, five had a more-than-20 per cent margin of victory. The biggest margin of victory was recorded by Anjula Singh Malhaur from Hathras, who polled 59 per cent of the votes in her constituency and won by a margin of 38 per cent.
There are 209 repeat winners in this election. None of these had won with a vote share of less than 35 per cent in their constituencies. Of the 209, 64 polled more than 50 per cent of the votes polled in their constituencies.
The NOTA option received less than one per cent of the votes.
