Maharashtra Assembly polls: 17 of 36 MLAs from Mumbai have pending criminal cases

Seventeen of the 36 elected candidates who will represent Mumbai in the Maharashtra Assembly over the next five years have pending criminal cases against them, and

Seventeen of the 36 elected candidates who will represent Mumbai in the Maharashtra Assembly over the next five years have pending criminal cases against them, and are not graduates. The charges against these 17 elected representatives range from disobedience of a lawful order, public agitation, deterring a public servant from discharge of duty, to serious ones such as carrying dangerous weapons, extortion, criminal intimidation and rioting.

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Five of 16 the BJP candidates have pending criminal cases, eight out of the Sena’s 14 representatives have pending criminal cases, three out of the four Congress representatives have cases, and Samajwadi Party has one pending criminal case.

An analysis of the affidavits of the 36 candidates elected from Mumbai on October 24 revealed that four of these elected representatives did not complete their schooling up till Class 10, seven passed Class 10, and six went on to study in junior college, but did not pass Class 12.

One of the elected representatives has a doctorate degree (PhD), the re-elected MLA from Versova, BJP’s Bharati Lavekar. Eleven of the 36 elected representatives are graduates, four are graduates in law, and three have a post-graduate degree.

The maximum number of degree holders is from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with 12 of its 16 elected representatives having a graduate or a post-graduate degree. Five of the 14 elected representatives from the Shiv Sena are graduates.

While two of the four elected representatives from the Congress are graduates, both lone representatives from Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) and Samajwadi Party (SP), Nawab Malik and Abu Azmi are graduates.

There are a total of five women among the 36 elected representatives, including BJP’s Manisha Chaudhari from Dahisar, BJP’s Vidya Thakur from Goregaon, BJP’s Bharati Lavekar from Versova, Shiv Sena’s Yamini Jadhav from Byculla, and Congress’ Varsha Gaikwad from Dharavi.