Eight CMs have serious criminal charges, 25 are crorepatis

DHNS

New Delhi, 12 Feb 2018: Eight of the 31 Chief Ministers, including Bihar’s Nitish Kumar and Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal, in the country have serious criminal charges against them from murder to cheating, while 25 of them are crorepatis, an analysis by a private election watchdog said on Monday.

 

Nitish, who is considered to be one of the cleanest chief ministers, has one case against him in which he is charged under sections of murder, attempt to murder, rioting and others while Kejriwal has ten cases against him in which there are four serious charges, including that of voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from discharging his duty.

 

The FIR against Nitish is related to a murder that took place in Bihar’s Rally village in November 1991 and four others were also named accused along with the Bihar chief minister. No chargesheet has been filed in the case so far.

 

Among the chief ministers, Maharashtra’s Devendra Fadnavis has the highest number of cases against him - 22, including three charges of serious nature, followed by Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan who has 11 cases in which one charge is that of a serious nature, according to the report released by Association for Democratic Rights (ADR).

 

Amarinder Singh of Punjab with four cases against him has the highest number of serious charges against him at 10. Other chief ministers with serious charges are Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh), Raghubar Das (Jharkhand) and K Chandrasekhar Rao (Telagana).

 

Andhra Pradesh’s Chandrababu Naidu, who has three cases against him, is the richest among the chief ministers with 177.48 crore assets followed by Arunachal Pradesh’ Pema Khandu (Rs 129.57 crore) and Amarinder Singh (Rs 48.31 crore).

 

While Karnataka’s Siddaramaiah, who has no cases against him, is ranked sixth in wealth with Rs 13.61 crore assets, the poorest among them is Tripura’s Manik Sarkar, who is seeking re-election, with Rs 26.83 lakh assets. West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee (Rs 30.54 lakh) and Jammu and Kashmir’s Mehbooba Mufti (Rs 55.96 lakh), who has a defamation case against her, are other poor chief ministers.

 

Besides Banerjee and Mufti, Rajasthan’s Vasundhara Raje is the only other woman chief minister in the country but she is richer than her counterparts with assets worth Rs 4.04 crore. Khandu at 35 years is the youngest chief minister while Amarinder is the oldest at 74 years.