chandigarh the share of crorepatis among people who are contesting the february 20 punjab assembly elections has risen from 37 in the 2017 polls to 42 now according to the latest analysis of candidates affidavits by the association of democratic rerformsthe share of candidates facing criminal cases to has risen from just 9 in 2017 to 25 now when it comes to candidates facing serious criminal offences the figure has risen from 7 in 2017 to 17 in this electionthe figure is not too promising when it comes to the educational background of the candidates in all 765 or people contesting the punjab assembly elections have studied up to just class xii shows data of them 49 are illiterate 21 are literate 75 are cl ass v pass 118 are class viii pass 263 are class x pass and just 239 are class 12 pass among other candidates 199 are graduates 141 have a graduate professional degree 135 are postgraduates eig ht are doctorates the qualification of 24 candidates has been categorized as others and four have not given their educational qualificationof the 1316 candidates in the fray in punjab adr analysed affidavits of 1276 candidates and could not check the papers of others as these were not legible among all the candidates 521 were found to be having assets worth more than rs 1 crore among these 521 crorepati candidates 380 belong to mainstream political parties including 89 to sad 107 to congress 60 to bjp 16 to bsp 11 to s hiromani akali dal sanyukt 81 to aap and 16 to punjab lok congress plcsad and bsp are contesting the elections in an alliance and so are the bjp plc and sad sanyukt the adr rep ort did not mention the assets of candidates belonging to the farmers political front sanyukt samaj morcha ssm as its candidates are not contesting on the partys name in the upcomi ng elections ssms ally gurnam singh charuniheaded sanyukt sangharsh party ssp has fielded eight candidates of whom five are crorepatis the average wealth of ssp candidates is rs 2 6 crore