A civic-transparency lens on India's Parliament.

Under the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and directions of the Supreme Court, every candidate contesting an Indian election must file a sworn affidavit (Form 26) disclosing pending criminal cases, prior convictions, assets, liabilities, and educational background. These affidavits are public documents.

NetaGirifiles aggregates the subset of this data that relates to criminal cases of sitting Lok Sabha MPs, reorganizes it by party, state, and individual, and presents it in a readable, visual form. We do not add, interpret, or editorialize the underlying declarations — we only make them easier to see.

The constitutional basis for this project is the Indian voter's right to know, which the Supreme Court of India has consistently recognized as a component of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

• Union of India v. Association for Democratic Reforms (2002) 5 SCC 294

  The Supreme Court held that voters have a fundamental right to know the antecedents of candidates contesting elections, including pending criminal cases, assets, and educational qualifications.

• People's Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India (2003) 4 SCC 399

  Reaffirmed that the right to information about public figures seeking elected office flows directly from Article 19(1)(a) and cannot be curtailed by ordinary legislation.

• Public Interest Foundation v. Union of India (2019) 3 SCC 224

  Directed political parties to publish the criminal antecedents of their candidates on their websites and in widely-circulated newspapers.

• Rambabu Singh Thakur v. Sunil Arora (2020) 3 SCC 733

  Mandated that parties disclose, within 48 hours of candidate selection, the criminal record of each candidate along with the reasons for selecting them.

NetaGirifiles is a good-faith exercise of that right — a tool to help citizens access information that courts have repeatedly held they are constitutionally entitled to see.

The source of every case count, IPC section, and candidate detail on this site is myneta.info, a public database maintained by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch. ADR is a registered non-profit that has been compiling candidate affidavits filed with the Election Commission of India since 2002, and its data is routinely cited by courts, journalists, and election monitors.

We do not scrape the Election Commission directly; we rely on myneta.info's structured, human-verified archive. Corrections and updates that flow into their archive flow into ours.

NetaGirifiles is open tooling over open data. Parts of the source code, interface copy, and design of this application were written or refined with the assistance of generative AI tools. The editorial decisions — which data to surface, how to classify cases, what disclaimers to attach — remain human. No AI model is used to generate case records, quotations, or accusations. The data you see here is exactly what the candidate themselves declared on oath.

Every figure on this site reflects pending declarations, not convictions. Under Indian law, an accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of competent jurisdiction. A pending case may be politically motivated, eventually dismissed, or settled. None of the MPs listed here have been adjudged guilty by this site simply by appearing in it.

We treat this distinction seriously. The phrasing, color palette, and framing across NetaGirifiles are intended to inform, not to accuse.

This site republishes public-record information that candidates themselves filed on sworn affidavit with a constitutional authority. It falls squarely within the protection of fair comment and reporting on matters of public interest, and within the voter's right to know as affirmed by the Supreme Court of India.

NetaGirifiles does not assert the truth of any allegation in an affidavit beyond the undisputed fact that the candidate themselves declared it. No statement on this site goes beyond what is already in the public record at myneta.info and in the Election Commission's archives.

If any individual believes a specific entry is factually incorrect — for instance, a case has since been quashed, or the underlying affidavit has been amended — we will review and update the record on receipt of the relevant document. Requests for takedown that are not supported by a documented factual error will be declined, as the underlying data remains a matter of public record.

Spot something inaccurate? Want to flag a record that has been updated at source? Please reach out. We aim to respond to good-faith correction requests within a reasonable time and to acknowledge corrections publicly.