New Delhi: The ruling Congress party, which heads the United Progressive Alliance, or UPA, government at the Centre, has given tickets to at least four candidates with criminal backgrounds on the list of 24 candidates for Uttar Pradesh it declared on 4 March for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms, or ADR, an Ahmedabad-based non-political group.

Full House: A view of Parliament on the concluding day of the 14 Lok Sabha. The month-long general election begins on 16 April. Atul Yadav / PTI

As part of its National Election Watch campaign, ADR obtained the affidavits of 19 of these 24 filed in previous elections and found that four have criminal records.

ADR had earlier revealed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party, or SP, had candidates with criminal records on the lists they had announced on 16 February.

Out of the 92 names given out by the BJP, affidavits of 28 were available with ADR, out of which eight were found to have a criminal background.

Of the 53 names declared by the SP on the same day, ADR studied the affidavits of 24. Six candidates had criminal charges against them.