House of Lords?

Mostly, crorepatis enter Rajya Sabha.

Where is aam aadmi?

Ashwani Talwar

Express News Service

First Published : 20 Jun 2010 12:02:00 AM IST

Last Updated : 20 Jun 2010 06:18:18 PM IST

NEW DELHI: Not all of them are in the Vijay Mallya league, but then they are no ‘aam aadmi’ either. Number-crunching by two election watchdogs shows over three-fourths of candidates who won the recent Rajya Sabha elections are crorepatis.

On average, each winning Elder this time is worth Rs 25 crore.

Association for Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch culled this from the affidavits filed by all 54 candidates for 49 seats across 12 of the 13 states where the Rajya Sabha elections were held this week. Fifteen candidates -- that’s 28 percent -- revealed they had criminal cases pending against them.

All of them -- including the six facing what the two NGOs call ‘serious cases’ such as attempt to murder, cheating and forgery -- were elected.

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who won as an independent candidate from Karnataka and rubbished innuendos of money playing a role in the elections, tops the league of rich Elders with his Rs 615 crores.

Trailing him is Rs 190 crore-worth Yalamanchili Satyanarayana Chowdary of Sujan Group of Companies who won for the Telugu Desam Party. Alchemist Group’s Kanwar Deep Singh (Rs 83 crore), the ‘outsider’ from Chandigarh fielded by Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, takes the third spot.

Orissa’s Tara Ranjan Patnaik (Rs 56 crore) was the next richest candidate, but he lost. BJP winners Piyush Goyal and Ram Jethmalani follow with their relatively modest crores.

At the bottom of the list are BJP’s Anil Dave (Rs 2.7 lakh), Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Ram Kripal Yadav (Rs 27.32 lakh) and Biju Janata Dal’s Shashi Bhushan Behera (Rs 29.74 lakh).

Mallya is among the only three candidates who declared they owned no immovable assets such as property or land. He also figures on the list of candidates with pending criminal cases with charges of cheating and forgery against him.

The new MPs are an educated bunch. Of the 54 candidates, three hold doctorates, 19 are post-graduates, 12 graduates, 11 are ‘graduate professionals’, seven have passed Class XII.

Women get lip service. Only three were fielded; all won.