Out of the 78 ministers in PM Narendra Modi’s revamped Cabinet, 33 – or 42% – have declared criminal cases against them, showed a report released by the Association for Democratic Reforms on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister inducted 43 leaders in the Union Cabinet. With this, the total number of members in the prime minister’s council of ministers went up to 78.
The report showed that 24 ministers have declared serious criminal cases against them, including for murder, attempt to murder and robbery.
The Association for Democratic Reforms said that Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports Nisith Pramanik has declared cases of murder and attempt to murder against him.
According to the report, three other ministers – John Barla, Pankaj Choudhary and V Muraleedharan – have attempt to murder cases against them.
National Election Watch (NEW) and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have analysed the selfsworn latest affidavits of all 78 ministers (Including Prime Minister) from Lok Sabha 2019, current Rajya Sabha and assembly elections.
5 ministers including Home Minister Amit Shah, Minister of Panchayati Raj Giriraj Singh, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Shobha Karandlaje, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi have declared cases related to promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony (IPC Section-153A) and Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs (IPC Section-295A).
Seven ministers – Nitin Gadkari, Giriraj Singh, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Satya Pal Singh Baghel, Pankaj Choudhary, Bhagwanth Khuba and Kaushal Kishor – have cases against them for electoral violations, including bribery and illegal payments.
