How do I read a candidate's affidavit?

A candidate's election affidavit is a useful starting record, not a complete biography or a substitute for court records. Begin with the actual election, constituency and filing date.

The independent MyNeta repository explains that its information comes from candidates' affidavits and that the original affidavit takes precedence over extraction errors. Use such a repository to locate and compare records, then return to the original document for a disputed detail. 1

Keep the categories separate

When reviewing a disclosure, distinguish pending criminal cases from convictions. Read assets separately from liabilities and income. Check whose information a field concerns and the date or financial period it covers. Do not compare a family-related asset field for one candidate with an individual income field for another.

A large disclosed asset amount is not, by itself, proof of corruption. A change between affidavits needs a like-for-like comparison and further evidence before you claim it has an unlawful explanation.

A real example of wording that matters

ADR's report dated 6 June 2024 states that 251 of the 543 winning candidates it analysed for the 2024 Lok Sabha election declared criminal cases. That is an attributed, historical disclosure-based finding. It is not a count of current MPs proved guilty of crimes. The report's election cohort also should not be silently converted into a deduplicated current-person database. 2

A responsible summary preserves the source, election and category. “Nearly half are criminals” discards the distinctions that make the number understandable.

Follow a case beyond the affidavit

An affidavit captures information at a particular stage. A later order may change a case's status. To describe a named person's current case, identify the proceeding and consult the relevant current court record rather than treating the old affidavit as a live feed.

Do not infer identity from a name alone. Do not merge unrelated proceedings into a single verdict. A charge, a bail order and a conviction mean different things. 3 4

Use the record to ask a specific question

Instead of asking whether a candidate is “clean”, identify the disclosed fact and the uncertainty: “What is the current status of this proceeding?” or “Which comparable fields explain the change in declared assets?”

An unanswered question is still unanswered. It is not permission to fill the gap with an accusation.