‘Nation losing patience’: SC on criminalisation of politics MPS with criminal cases increased in last decade: Report
NEW DELHI: The nation continues to wait and is losing patience, said the Supreme Court on Tuesday as it made an “appeal to the conscience of the lawmakers hoping that they will wake up soon and carry out a major surgery for weeding out the malignancy of criminalisation in politics,” which, it added, was “growing day by day.”
Expressing anguish over the non-compliance by various political parties with its 2020 judgment on the disclosure of criminal antecedents of candidates being put up by them, the top court lamented that its exhortations for amending laws to prohibit involvement of persons with criminal antecedents “have fallen on the deaf ears”.
“The political parties refuse to wake up from deep slumber... Cleansing the polluted stream of politics is obviously not one of the immediate pressing concerns of the legislative branch of government,” said the bench of justices Rohinton F Nariman and BR Gavai, maintaining that the court’s hands are tied due to constitutional scheme of separation of powers that entitles only parliament to make laws and the courts cannot legislate.
The court’s remarks came as it held the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Janata Dal (United), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress, among others, guilty of contempt for not complying with its directions regarding complete disclosure of criminal antecedents of candidates put up by them during the Bihar assembly elections in 2020, and imposed a fine of ₹1 lakh on each.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Nationalist Congress Party were asked to cough up ₹5 lakh each for not following the court’s directions “at all”.
The bench said that the political parties, which also included Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and Communist Party of India, shall deposit the money in a fund that will be created by the Election
Commission of India (ECI) for an “extensive awareness campaign to make every voter aware about his right to know and the availability of information regarding criminal antecedents of all contesting candidates”.
It directed ECI to create a dedicated mobile application containing information about criminal antecedents of the candidates so as to enable voters access such information conveniently.
The apex poll body, ordered the bench, shall also create a separate cell to monitor compliance by political parties with the court’s directions issued in February 2020 regarding disclosure of criminal backgrounds of their candidates, and bring all instances of breach to the court’s attention.
The top court, which earlier directed political parties to put out information about the cases pending against their candidates on their websites, further ordered that the parties will now create a new caption -- “candidates with criminal antecedents” on the home page of their websites to make it easier for the voter to get to the information.
The court also modified its 2020 direction, in which it obligated the parties to publish the details within 48 hours of the selection of the candidate or not
NEW DELHI: According to an analysis of candidate affidavits by the not-for-profit Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the share of MPS with declared criminal cases against them has been increasing in the last decade. Of the 543 winners analysed by ADR in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, 162 (30%) had declared criminal cases against them, with 76 (14%) having serious criminal cases against them. The share of MPS with criminal and serious criminal cases increased to 43% and 29%, according to an analysis of 539 winners in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. To be sure, at least some of such cases are politically motivated.
In 2019, candidates with declared criminal cases against them had a 15.5% chance of winning compared to 4.7% for candidates without such cases against them.
The trend remains the same across parties. In 2019, while 39% of the BJP’S winning candidates had a criminal case against them, this number was 57% for the Congress, 43% for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and 41% for the All India Trinamool Congress.
In two separate judgments on August 10, the Supreme Court asked political parties to publish pending criminal cases against their candidates within 48 hours of their nomination for the ticket, reiterating and strengthening its 2020 order. The court has also ruled that states cannot withdraw cases against MPS and MLAS without the corresponding high court’s nod, something that has become increasingly common.
The first of these two judgments assumes that voters may not be aware of criminal antecedents of candidates. Research by political scientist Milan Vaishnav, the director of Carnegie South Asia at Washington DC, also featured in his book When Crime Pays, shows that this need not be the case. According to Vaishnav, voters actually find value in supporting ‘strongman’ candidates as they are more capable of delivering on voters’ expectations of navigating the local institutions.
“The apex court’s order (on mandatory high court approval for dropping cases) is a positive step toward ensuring that no individual is above accountability,” Vaishnav said.
“However, the ruling addresses the symptoms rather than the cause of the disease. Ultimately, one has to grapple with the reasons why parties give tickets to suspected criminals and voters lend them their support,” Vaishnav added.