At least 22 newly sworn-in UP ministers face criminal cases: ADR

Of the 45 newly sworn-in Uttar Pradesh ministers, 22 have declared criminal cases against themselves and most of them face serious charges, poll rights body ADR said on Saturday.

Uttar Pradesh Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have analysed the self-sworn affidavits of 45 of the total 53 ministers, including the chief minister.

The affidavits of Sanjay Nishad and Jitin Prasada were unavailable for analysis on the election commission's website at the time of bringing out this report, while details of ministers JPS Rathore, Narendra Kashyap, Dinesh Pratap Singh, Dayashankar Mishra Dayalu, Jaswant Saini and Danish Azad Ansari were not analysed as they are currently not members of either the state assembly or the legislative council.

According to the ADR report, 22 (49 per cent) ministers have declared criminal cases against themselves and 20 (44 per cent) ministers have declared serious criminal cases against themselves.

Of the 45 ministers analysed, 39 (87 per cent) are crorepatis and their average assets are pegged at Rs 9 crore.

As per his affidavit, Mayankeshwar Sharan Singh from Tiloi constituency owns the highest declared total assets worth Rs 58.07 crore and Dharamveer Singh, an MLC, at Rs 42.91 lakh, is the minister with the lowest declared total assets.

Twenty seven ministers have declared liabilities. Rakesh Sachan of Bhognipur constituency has liabilities to the tune of Rs 8.17 crore, the highest among the ministers, the report said.

It said nine (20 per cent) ministers have declared their educational qualification to be between Classes 8 to 12 while 36 (80 per cent) ministers are graduates and beyond.

Twenty (44 per cent) ministers have declared their age to be between 30 and 50 years while 25 (56 per cent) ministers stated that they were between 51 and 70 years old.

Of the 45 ministers analysed, five (11 per cent) are women.