Forty-seven candidates, including two women, who will contest in the forthcoming Karnataka elections, have various criminal cases registered against them. A study conducted by the Karnataka Election Watch shows that 47 such candidates will fight the elections in the first phase of the assembly polls on May 10.

The Janata Dal-Secular has as many as 13 candidates with criminal records, while the Bharatiya Janata Party has 12 such candidates in the fray. The Congress has 10 such  candidates while the Bahujan Samaj Party has nine. The Janata Dal-United, the Kannada Chalavali Vatal Paksha and the Samajwadi Party are each fielding one candidate with criminal history.

Some of these candidates face serious charges such as murder, attempt to murder and assault with deadly weapons.

However, when compared to the assembly elections in 2004, the number of candidates with criminal records has actually gone down. In 2004, the JD-S had fielded 20 candidates with criminal records while the BJP had as many as 28. The Congress had fielded 12 candidates with criminal records.

The Karnataka Election watch has also published a list with the names of all the candidates, from various political parties, who have a criminal record.

BJP: Nirmal Surana, Shivarudrappa B, Shivana Sogadu, Shobha Karandlaje, S A Ramadass, D Krishnakumar, B Suresh Gowda, K G Bopaiah, B P Manjunath, N S Nadieshareddy, Hemachandra Sagar D and E S Krishnaiah.

BSP: Rangaswamy, M Muniyappa, K J Shreedhara Kaliveer, C R Abdul Hadi, T J Abraham, Ismail Sharrief, Mehboob Pasha, K Venkatesh and Chinnaswamy.

Congress- C P Yogeshwar, D C Sannaswamy, Amresh, Padmavathi G, Tanveer Sait, A Manju, K R Ramesh Kumar, K Chandrashekhar, K N Rajanna and Chandrappa B

JD-S: M S Siddaraju, S R Mahesh, Zameer Ahmed, R Srinivas Murthy, K N Vasanth, S R Srinivas, Panchalingaiah, M C Ashwath, M Bakthavachalam, H V Krishnaswamy, T M Range Gowda, K Gopalaiah and Ashfaq Ahmed.

JD-U: Mohammad Nazeer Ahmed

KCVP: Vatal Nagaraj

SP: C M Dyavappa