Politics, Like Crime, Pays

POLITICS IS THE FIRST refuge of scoundrels. That piece of conventional wisdom may be contested by the few politicians who regard themselves as serving the public interest. Statistics tell a different tale: 1,581 MPs and MLAs across political parties face criminal prosecution. Nearly 34 per cent of MPs in the current Lok Sabha have criminal cases against them.

- Minhaz Merchant

An alarmed Supreme Court last month directed the Narendra Modi government to set up special courts to hold “exclusive” trials against tainted lawmakers and “decide the cases within a year”.

The issue is more complicated than even the Supreme Court imagines. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has long published names of parliamentarians and state legislators who face criminal charges. Some of these charges are flimsy and relate to unlawful political morchas, crowd disturbances at campaign rallies and controversial speeches. But some charges are serious enough to warrant the Supreme Court’s intervention. The Election Commission of India (ECI) prescribes a six-year ban on convicted lawmakers. It wants to convert that into a life ban. Those affected by such a ban would include Lalu Prasad Yadav, chief of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), convicted in the fodder scam.

Politicians frequently claim that cases against them are politically motivated and fabricated. One of the founders of the Association for Democratic Reforms, Jagdeep Chhokhar, a tireless advocate of cleaning up Indian politics, has an answer to such apprehensions: “A simpler, and arguably, more effective step could be to ban all persons from contesting elections who have criminal cases pending against them, but with three safeguards against misuse. Only those cases should be considered (for disqualification from contesting) in which: (a) punishment is two (or three, or five) years or more; (b) the case has been registered at least six months before the announcement of elections; and (c) charges have been framed by a court of law. These are the safeguards that the Supreme Court has specified in 2002 but which have been forgotten in the din.”