The Association of Democratic Reforms has analysed 280 of 469 Lok Sabha candidates announced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC) and discovered that:
The data do not seem to be up as yet on the ADR website, so here is quick breakdown by party using the numbers quoted in news reports:
It would appear that the proportion of candidates with criminal cases in 2014 has gone up in comparison with 2009 — from a fourth to close to a third. The INC’s proportion stays constant at 27% but the BJP’s seems to have risen by 7 percentage points to 35%.
But don’t race to any conclusions until parties have declared all their candidates. We don’t know the basis on which the sample of 280 candidate affidavits was chosen, and that too from a partial list of 469 candidate declarations. The two biggest parties together had 833 candidates standing for election to the Lok Sabha last time.
Chunauti 
Can you please provide analysis of all other parties too ?
The ADR has only released its analysis of BJP and INC candidates. We’ll have to wait for it to get to the others. However my Mar 11 post “Guilty parties” does look at the top ten parties of the 15th Lok Sabha.