Bhubaneswar: As many as 20 out of 66 candidates contesting for six Lok Sabha constituencies of the State where elections will be held on last phase on June 1 are crorepatis.
Six Lok Sabha constituencies of Balasore, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Kendrapara and Mayurbhanj will go for polling during the fourth phase elections in Odisha.
Odisha Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have analysed the self-sworn affidavits of all 66 candidates, who are contesting in the six Lok Sabha constituencies.
Out of the 66 candidates, 20 (30 percent) candidates have assets worth more than Rs 1 crore. The average assets per candidate contesting the last phase of the LS elections are Rs 3.83 crore.
Among major parties, the average assets of each BJP candidate are Rs 27.12 crore, followed by six BJD candidates with average assets worth Rs 6.61 crore, five Congress candidates with Rs 2.37 crore, the report said.
Baijayant Panda, BJP candidate for Kendrapara LS seat, is the richest candidate in fray for this phase of election with a declared assets worth Rs 148.08 crore, followed by independent candidate Sriram Pandey (Rs 18.23 crore) from Kendrapara segment and sitting BJP MP Manjulata Mandal (Rs 14.86 crore) from Bhadrak.
Three candidates with the lowest assets are Utkal Samaj party’s Bhanumati Das (Rs 1500) contesting from Jagatsinghpur LS seat, independent candidate Deepak Sankar Thakur Giri (Rs 6,000) from Balasore and BSP’s Bibhuti Bhusan Majhi (Rs 6,061) from Jagatsinghpur LS segment, the report said.
The ADR also revealed that 15 (23 percent) candidates have declared criminal cases against themselves, of whom 10 candidates are facing serious criminal cases.
As many as 19 MP candidates have declared their educational qualification to be between class V and XII, while 43 candidates are graduates or above. Besides, two candidates are Diploma holders and two candidates have declared themselves to be just literate.
The report further said that 14 candidates have declared their age to be between 25 to 40 years while 34 candidates belong to 41 to 60 years age group. There are 18 senior candidates who have declared their age to be between 61 to 80 years.