Criminals in elections

Sunday, November 23, 2008

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20081123/edit.htm#1

Perspective

A Tribune Special

Criminals in elections

Parties should choose clean candidates, says Jagdeep S. Chhokar

Commenting editorially on October 15 on elections to the state assemblies of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Mizoram, The Tribune said, “The political parties have an onerous responsibility to ensure that only candidates with impeccable credentials are given tickets to contest the elections. They must shun those with criminal antecedents. The increasing problem of criminalisation of politics can be tackled at the entry level itself only if all the parties show the door to criminals, history-sheeters, hoodlums and gangsters.”

The sentiment expressed in the editorial is indeed laudable and in keeping with the larger public sentiment in the country, as expressed in an Internet poll as far back as 2000. According to this survey, 79 per cent of the respondents said that providing criminal records of aspiring MPs would check criminalisation of politics.

It is heartening to note that the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the declared prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, Mr L.K. Advani, announced on October 18 that “his party would not field any candidate with a criminal background in the forthcoming general elections even if the prospective candidate was on a winning wicket”. One hopes that all political parties follow this announcement, at least the major parties.

There is, however, another side to the story. The same day that The Indian Express reported Mr Advani’s announcement, another newspaper, The Hindu, reported that the state government of one of the states going to the polls next month is reported to have withdrawn around 72,000 criminal cases, possibly in anticipation of or in preparation for the ongoing Assembly elections in the state.

The second of the two reports is obviously disturbing, particularly given what happened in the last elections to four of these State Assemblies, for which data is available based on the implementation of the landmark judgment by the Supreme Court on March 13, 2003, which made disclosure of pending criminal cases by candidates contesting elections to Parliament and State Assemblies mandatory, in the face of stiff opposition by the entire political establishment.

Based on available data, about 20 per cent of all the candidates who contested the State Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had criminal cases pending against them, the exact figures for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh being 19.74 and 12.5 per cent respectively.

That is about the candidates who contested the elections. What about those who won the elections and actually went on to become the elected representatives of ‘We, the People’ with legitimate authority to make laws and take decisions which govern the way we can and should lead our lives?

These numbers are not heartening at all. A total of 18.48 per cent of all the MLAs in these four states (Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan) had criminal cases pending against them. Sadly, it is the national capital which had the dubious honour to have the highest proportion of MLAs with criminal cases pending against them, 34.29 per cent, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 22.61 per cent, and Rajasthan with 13.5 per cent. It was the low percentage in Chhattisgarh (6.67 per cent) that brought the combined average of the four states down to 18.48 per cent.
However, this figure of 18.48 per cent is itself a cause for concern, particularly when one notices that as many as 18.18 per cent of the MPs in the current Lok Sabha have criminal cases pending against them, as mentioned by none other than Chief Election Commissioner of India N. Gopalaswami while delivering the 23rd Sardar Vallabhai Patel memorial lecture on the theme, “Election Management: New Paradigm” at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad on October 20, 2008.

The scourge of criminality has been gnawing at the roots of democracy in the country. The governments of the day have not been ignorant about it over the years. The N.N. Vohra Committee, consisting of the Union Home Secretary as Chairman, and Secretary (Research and Analysis Wing), Director (Intelligence Bureau), Director (Central Bureau of Investigation) as members, and Joint Secretary in the Home Ministry as the Member-Secretary, was appointed by the Government in July 1993.
This Committee was constituted “to take stock of all available information about the activities of crime syndicates/ mafia organisations which had developed links with and were being protected by government functionaries and political personalities.”
In the first meeting of the Committee, the Chairman Mr Vohra “perceived that some of the members appeared to have some hesitation in openly expressing their views and also seemed unconvinced that the government actually intended to pursue such matters” (emphasis added).

The Chairman decided to write the report himself, justifying his action in one of the concluding paragraphs of the report thus: “In the normal course, this Report would have been drafted by the Member Secretary and finalised by the Committee. Considering the nature of the issues involved, I did not consider it desirable to burden the Members of the Committee with any further involvement beyond the views expressed by them. Accordingly, I decided to personally dictate this Report.”
Mr Vohra went on to write, “I have prepared only three copies of this Report. One copy each is being submitted to Minster of State (Internal Security) and Home Minister, the third copy being retained by me. After HM has perused this Report, I request him to consider discussing further action with Finance Minister, MOS (IS) and myself. The emerging approach could thereafter be got approved from the Prime Minister before being implemented.”

The report was submitted in October 1993. The initial attempts by the government seemed to be to keep the report under wraps but somehow, given the infirmities of our governance systems, it got leaked and is now widely available even on the Internet. There seems to be no hint of any action taken on the report.

Six years later, in May 1999, the Law Commission of India submitted its 170th Report on Electoral Reforms to the government. This is by far the most comprehensive review and set of recommendations on the subject.

Among the many recommendations is one to disqualify a person from contesting elections for five years if charges have been framed against him/her in a criminal case in which the possible punishment is two years or more of imprisonment. This, of course, has not been done so far.

Even an attempt to get candidates contesting elections to disclose criminal cases pending against them required four years of public interest litigation, including fending off an attempt to amend the Representation of the People Act by getting the President to issue an Ordinance, but finally resulting in the judgment by the Supreme Court on March 13, 2003 in favour of the public interest litigation.

The Law Commission had also made several other far-reaching recommendations which, if implemented in the right spirit, would significantly improve the electoral system and make it much more representative of public opinion.

Several of the recommendations have been repeatedly supported by the Election Commission publicly and in its communications to the government. In his lecture in Hyderabad, the current Chief Election Commissioner reiterated some of these proposals such as requiring a minimum of 50 per cent plus one vote for the winning candidate, barring persons facing charges of committing heinous crimes from contesting elections.

A letter written in July 2004 by the then Chief Election Commissioner, Mr Krishnamurthy, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh detailed a list of 22 proposals made by the Election Commission to improve the electoral system. There has been no known response from the government. The sad but inescapable conclusion seems to be that successive governments have done little on electoral reforms. They did not have even the slightest inclination to effect any significant change in the electoral system.
It is against this background that the announcement “No tickets to those with criminal background” and also the news that criminal cases are being withdrawn, possibly in anticipation of or in preparation for the forthcoming Assembly elections in the States, acquire importance.

The hope is that good sense and national interest will prevail, and political parties will show sagacity by choosing clean candidates so that the rapid decline in the confidence of the people in the political and electoral processes can be reversed.

The writer, a retired Professor of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, is a founding member of the Association for Democratic Reforms