DOI: 10.3886/icpsr35512.v1
title: Electoral Performance and Criminal Status of Candidates Contesting the 2004 and 2009 Parliamentary Elections to the Lok Sabha (India)
title: Version 1

description: This dataset contains information on the election results for and criminal charges against all candidates contesting elections to the lower house of the Parliament of India, the Lok Sabha, in the 2004 and 2009 elections. These were the first national elections conducted after the 2002 Supreme Court ruling mandating that all candidates running for public office file affidavits with the Election Commission of India prior to the election. In these affidavits, candidates report their criminal histories or pending criminal charges. Only charges for offenses punishable by two or more years of imprisonment, which were lodged more than six months before the candidate filed for candidacy, must be reported. Affidavits were compiled and digitized by the Liberty Institute of India, a New Delhi-based non-government organization, and posted on its website. The investigators compiled election results from the Election Commission of India and criminal status data from the affidavits. The unit of analysis is the individual candidate, and the dataset includes each candidate's name, party affiliation, election year, geographic area (state and parliamentary constituency), election results (votes received, win/loss, and rank among candidates), and whether or not charges were filed against the candidate.
description: The dataset contains variables about each of the candidates' names, party affiliations, geographic location, votes received and electoral results as well as whether or not criminal charges had been filed against each candidate.
description: Data are not weighted. No weight variables are present.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Created variable labels and/or value labels.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS1: Dataset
description: All electoral data included in this dataset is from the Election Commission of India (downloaded October 2007 from Election Commission of India Web site. 
 Data on self-reported criminal status of candidates is from the Liberty Institute of India (downloaded May 2009 from the Liberty Institute of India Web site). The only data point input from this source was whether the candidates reported being charged or not. Please refer to the source dataset for further data regarding the candidates' convictions, assets, and liabilities. 
Devesh K. Tiwari of the University of California-San Diego assisted in the creation of this dataset.
description: Candidates who ran for India's lower house of Parliament (Lok Sabha) in the 2004 and 2009 election years. Smallest Geographic Unit: Parliamentary Consituency
description: The dataset includes records for all candidates running for election to the lower house of Parliament of India (the Lok Sabha) in the 2004 and 2009 election years.