A little over 26% of Members of Parliament were Post Graduates while around 45% were Graduates, according to a report by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and the National Election Watch (NEW).
The data in the recently released report shows that there were 54 MPs drawn from both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha who held doctorates, 22 were diploma holders, 89 had passed the class 12th exams and 51, the standard 10th exams.
While 184 were graduates, 141 were professional graduates. Only one MP was illiterate.
The details emerged after an analysis of the self-sworn affidavits of 763 sitting MPs out of 776 seats of both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha by ADR and NEW. The data was extracted from affidavits filed by the MPs prior to contesting their last elections and subsequent bye-elections.
Four Lok Sabha and one seat of Rajya Sabha are vacant and 4 Rajya Sabha seats of Jammu and Kashmir are undefined. The affidavit of one Lok Sabha MP and three Rajya Sabha MPs could not be analysed as they were not available.
The report also threw up interesting data as far as the age of the MPs was concerned with a majority 769 MPs are in the age group of 51 to 70 years.
While 239 (31.32%) were in the 51-60 years age group, 209 (27.39%) were in the 61-70 years and 184 in the 41-50 years bracket.
Only nine MPs were aged 25-30 years and a mere six were above 81.
While 306 (40%) MPs have declared criminal cases, around 194 (25%) MPs have declared serious criminal cases, including cases related to murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, crimes against women et al. Of the aforesaid, 32 MPs have declared cases of ‘attempt to murder’ (IPC Section 307), while 21 MPs have declared cases related to crimes against women. Of these 21, four MPs have declared cases related to rape (IPC Section 376).
The report also showed that the average worth of assets per MP from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha was ₹38.33 crore and 53 (seven%) were billionaires.
As far as the major parties were concerned, the average assets per Bharatiya Janata Party MP was ₹18.31 crore, 81 Indian National Congress MPs have an average assets of ₹39.12 crore, 36 Trinamool Congress MPs have average assets worth ₹8.72 crore, 31 Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party MPs have average assets worth ₹153.76 crore, and 16 Bharat Rashtra Samithi MPs have average assets worth ₹383.51 crores.
