More than 33,000 cases have been registered in Madhya Pradesh under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in the the last four years, the state government has said.

The number of cases registered under this Act has gone up in the state in the past two years, as per the data provided by Home Minister Narottam Mishra in the state Legislative Assembly on Friday in a written reply to a question asked by Congress MLA Jitu Patwari.

The data said that 33,239 cases under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act were registered in a period of around four years between January 2018 and November 2021.

At 9,664, the highest number of such cases were registered in 2020, while as many as 9,249 cases were filed in 11 months of this year.

A total of 6,852 cases were registered under this Act in 2018, while this number was 7,474 in 2019, the data said.

Along with the cases registered under SC/ST Act, Patwari in the same question had also sought information about the annual conviction percentage in the cases related to atrocities against women.

The reply said that there has been an annual average conviction of 27 per cent of the cases related to atrocities against women in Madhya Pradesh in the last seven years.

It added that the conviction rate in the cases of atrocities against women was 27.16 per cent in 2015, 27.34 per cent in 2016, 26.98 per cent in 2017, 23.15 per cent in 2018, 29.39 per cent in 2019, 26.10 per cent in 2020 and 28.29 per cent in 2021.