Politics
Political parties' educated bets and crorepati candidates
Summary
There has been a slow rise in the preference for educated candidates. Big parties such as Congress and the BJP are more inclined to give tickets to graduates.Gujarat, whose election results will be announced today, has consistently had the dubious distinction of being the state with the fewest graduates among its election candidates, a Mint analysis of 90 state elections in the last 15 years shows.
In the latest polls, only 28% of Gujarat’s candidates held a graduate degree. Manipur is the best on this front, with nearly three in four candidates being graduates. There has been a slow rise in the preference for educated candidates, and big parties such as Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are more inclined to give tickets to graduates.
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Meanwhile, one-fourth of all the candidates were crorepatis, and the share has doubled over the three election cycles, rising to 31% in the 2018-22 period. The increase has been the sharpest for BJP candidates. This is the second of a two-part series based on an analysis of data compiled by MyNeta.info, a data platform run by Association for Democratic Reforms, which pores over the affidavits submitted by candidates while filing their nominations. We covered 90 state elections since 2008—this covers three rounds of elections in each state. The first part looked at candidates’ criminal records.
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