Hyderabad: In the recent past, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee expressed his dismay about how the contemporary political circles are filled with tainted leaders. The ugly face of tarnished politics is now present for everyone to see in Bihar’s election turf.
In a bid to rid the country of criminal politicians, the Supreme Court in January issued clear directives to political parties. It ordered parties to publish the entire criminal history of their candidates for Assembly and Lok Sabha elections along with the reasons that compelled them to field the accused instead of people with clean records.
Bihar Legislative Assembly elections 2020 will be the first of elections in which political parties will be required to publish the criminal records of the their candidates. But major parties have already dashed the hopes of seeing decent contestants.
As of 2015, 58 percent of Bihar legislators had criminal cases registered against them. Of the 1,066 candidates who are in fray during the first phase of assembly polls, 319 are facing criminal charges.
The RJD and the JD(U) gave tickets to gangsters Anant Singh and Ritlal Yadav besides fielding the wives of politicians facing criminal charges. RJD asserted its decision to field “Chote Sarkar” Anant Singh, who is facing as many as 38 criminal cases including charges of murder, extortion and kidnapping. According to the party, Singh is the most famous person in the area and has helped a lot of poor people.
Though leaders like KR Narayanan asked political parties to stop giving refuge to criminals; nobody seemed to paid heed to his words. The apex court ruled that petty offences can be a ground to deny a job. Yet, the same rule has not been applied to legislative assemblies.
The Supreme Court said that voters have a right to know their candidates. A party cannot allow a person to contest on its ticket if he discloses criminal antecedents.
In a 2018 order, the apex court said that the candidate’s criminal history must be published in a local as well as national newspaper and party’s social media handles. As it became compulsory for candidates to declare their criminal details, they published their records in newspapers and news channels with low circulation and publicity.
It is highly possible that the recent Supreme Court's judgement could be rendered pointless.
The Election Commission of India, which proclaims to be busy conducting awareness campaigns about the value of voting; should also shoulder the responsibility of making the public aware of the candidates’ criminal antecedents. The EC should bring to the notice of voters, the number of criminal contestants from each party and the reasons for fielding them. Until Parliament makes appropriate laws to curb criminals from contesting the elections, the EC must do its part in raising the awareness of voters to decriminalize politics.
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