Following the raft of allegations about MPs and their expenses this month, it would be understandable for you to have thought Britain’s lawmakers amongst the most corrupt on the planet.

If you were to glance across at events on the sub-Continent this week, however, you may have drawn a slightly different conclusion; set against the suspected criminals with dubious backgrounds elected in India’s General Election, Westminster comes across as a veritable bastion of propriety.

No fewer than 150 of the 541 MPs elected to the 15th Lok Sabha last weekend, which saw Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returned to power, have criminal cases pending against them – 28 per cent of the new legislature – of which 73 face serious charges.

Most shocking of all, 17 MPs have been charged with murder, or 3.14 per cent – equivalent to 20 MPs in the House of Commons. Unthinkable!

Of the 17, three face multiple charges of murder. Ramakant Yadav, BJP MP for Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh and Shibu Soren, JMM member for Dumka in Jharkand are each charged with two counts of murder.

The most serious offender of all, however, seems to be Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, INC representative for Baharampur, West Bengal, who faces three counts of murder, as well as charges of voluntarily causing hurt, wrongful restraint, criminal trespass, criminal intimidation and mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees.

In addition to the 17 accused of murder, 19 have been indicted for attempted murder – one of whom, INC MP for Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajkumari Ratna Singh, faces two counts – four for kidnapping or abducting in order to murder and two for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

Other crimes MPs have been charged with include forgery, rioting armed with a deadly weapon, defamation, dacoity, desertion, wrongful confinement, impersonation of a public servant, theft, robbery, slave trading, extortion, arson, child prostitution, bribery, assaulting a police officer, harbouring an offender, breaking an inmate out of jail, unlawful assembly, obscene acts and songs, domestic violence, promoting enmity between different religions, races and castes, obstructing the public highway, dangerous driving, attempted suicide and committing depredation on territories of Power at peace with the Government of India.

Phew! I dare say that any comparable offence from the above, if levelled against a sitting Member of Parliament here in Britain, would lead to them at the very least being suspended from their party if not facing outright expulsion from the House.

Many losing candidates also have question marks against their name, according to the study by India’s National Election Watch, an umbrella group comprising more than 1,200 non-governmental organisations and other citizen led groups campaigning for transparency, good governance and electoral reform in the world’s largest democracy.

Some 965 unsuccessful candidates have criminal charges pending, one of whom, Dinesh Rathour, failed candidate for Araria constituency in Bihar, faces 58 counts – 52 of them for serious offences.

The lid may have been lifted on the unsavoury goings-on down in Westminster, from Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz’s 22 silk cushions and deposed Justice Minister Shahid Malik’s £730 massage chair to Labour backbencher Khaled Mahmood’s nine-night £1,350 stay at the five-star Bentley hotel in Kensington and Labour peer Baroness Uddin’s £100,000 expenses claim for an empty flat she’d never slept in, but nothing remotely as serious as murder.

Britain deserves better, it’s true, and many of those fingered, the likes of Luton South MP Margaret Moran and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, deserve to wind up in jail, but no one’s been accused of grievous criminality; they aren’t half as bad as some of their counterparts across the globe.

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