Half of total ministers in Uttar Pradesh are tainted

Lucknow: A Non-government Organisation (NGO) , Association for Democratic Reforms, has come out with a report ,which can be far from pleasing to the ruling Samajwadi Party and makes its claim of keeping the criminal elements away, look hollow.

According to a survey made by the organisation, half of the ministers in his council are tainted. Eleven of them are facing murder or attempt to murder or kidnapping charges. None of them has a clean image, contrary to the claim of the party.

The Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh has 58 ministers out of which 28 have criminal records and been charged with one criminal incident or the other. Eight of them have been charged with murder or attempt to murder. Family welfare minister Ravidas Mehrotra has the highest number of criminal cases pending against a minister.

The report has listed a total of 17 cases pending against him. Minister for textile Mahboob Ali is not much behind him. In police record he has 12 cases . Another minister, Raghuraj Pratap Singh has eight cases against him . The cases are related to murder and dacoity.

The other "criminal" ministers are: Shailendra Yadav, Manoj Pandey, Tej Narain Pndey, Arvind Singh Gope, Vinod Kumar, Ramkaran Arya, Jagdish Sonkar, Ram Sakal Gujjar, Azam Khan, Shankhlal Manjhi, Kailash Chaurasia, Radhe Shyam Singh, Brahma Shankar Tripathi, Durga Prasad Yadav, Surendra Patel, Ram Murti Singh, Riyaz Ahmed, Iqbal Mahmood, Gayatri Prajapati, Narendra Singh Verma, Sahab Singh, Manpal Singh, Yasir Shah, SP Yadav and Mulchand Chauhan.

Of them, two ministers, Azam Khan and Gayatri Prasad Prajapati, are reported to be close to the national Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav.