83 percent of Haryana lawmakers are millionaires

Over 83 percent of the legislators elected to the 13th legislative assembly in Haryana are millionaires, a research claimed Monday.

The Haryana Election Watch (HEW) and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said the average assets of legislators in the new assembly were Rs.12.97 crore.

In the previous assembly elected in 2009, the average assets of elected members were Rs.6.71 crore.

Among parties, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) candidates were the richest with average assets of Rs.13.01 crore followed by Congress members with assets of Rs.12.45 crore. BJP legislators have average assets of Rs.10.5 crore, the ADR study said.

The five independent legislators elected had average assets of Rs.13.95 crore each.

The average assets of the contesting candidates in the 2014 assembly polls were at Rs.4.38 crore. The richest one among them had declared assets of Rs.212 crore.

The study pointed out that 21 legislators had been re-elected this time in the 90-member assembly.

While the average assets of these re-elected members were Rs.4 crore in 2009, now they had gone up to Rs.13.8 crore.

The average growth of the re-elected legislators (from 2009 to 2014) was Rs.9.8 crore -- or a whopping 245 percent.

The growth among parties was the Congress at Rs.8.49 crore, the INLD at Rs.8.22 crore and the BJP at Rs.2.13 crore between 2009 and 2014.

BJP victor from the Faridabad seat Vipul Goyal, with declared assets of Rs.106 crore, is the richest winner. He has also showed liabilities of Rs.43 crore, the highest among all winning candidates.

Other rich winners included Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) president Kuldeep Bishnoi (Rs.80 crore), his wife Renuka Bishnoi (Rs.80 crore), BJP's Abhimanyu (Rs.77 crore) and INLD's Abhay Chautala (Rs.43 crore).

The ADR pointed out that 10 percent of the elected legislators had criminal cases against them.

Results of the Haryana assembly election Sunday were historic for the BJP as the party romped home winning 47 seats in the 90-member assembly. The BJP would form the government on its own in the state for the first time.

The INLD followed with 19 legislators while the Congress, which was in power since March 2005, managed to get only 15 seats. Two seats went to the HJC, one each to Shiromani Akali Dal and Bahujan Samaj Party. Five Independent candidates were also elected.