Electoral politics in India is in desperate need of a clean-up. It goes without saying. Since the political class won’t wield the broom to clean its own mess, the effort has to come from the courts. The Supreme Court’s verdict on convicted lawmakers is laudable indeed. The question really is what took it so long coming.
As many as 162 members of Parliament of the total 543 have criminal charges against them. Seventy-six of them face serious charges including murder and rape.
The scene is much worse in state legislative assemblies and councils. According to election watchdogs Association for Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch (NEW), of the 4,896 lawmakers—members of Parliament and legislators—who voted for the presidential election last year, 1,448 faced criminal charges. In their affidavits before the Election Commission earlier, 641 had mentioned serious charges such as kidnapping, extortion, murder and rape.
Surely, the numbers don’t throw up a pretty picture of the democracy. Criminals as people’s representatives distort the very idea of democracy as a civilisational accomplishment. It needed to change. There have been efforts in this direction since 1990s and several reports recommending steps to weed out criminals from the political system. Obviously, the political class was not too keen in correcting its ways. The first big strike came in 2002 when the Supreme Court mandated that candidates contesting state and national elections submit a legal affidavit disclosing information about one’s criminal record among other personal details. This had little effect since the declaration of criminal charges did not mean automatic disqualification and the Election Commission hardly has the power to act on these.
In 2004, the Election Commission had called for an amendment of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 to disqualify candidates charge have been framed for offences that carry a minimum sentence of five years. Any such amendment required active interest from the elected representatives, many of whom have criminal charges against themselves. No wonder, the commission’s idea had few takers. The Representation of People’s Act, 1951, makes a provision for the disqualification of candidates who have been convicted by a court of law, but it protects the latter by making disqualification conditional to the pendency of appeal in superior courts. This allowed convicted lawmakers to continue in their offices.
The Supreme Court changed that today by making it clear that conviction by a trial court was ground for disqualification. “The only question is about the vires of section 8(4) of the Representation of the People Act (RPA) and we hold that it is ultra vires and that the disqualification takes place from the date of conviction,” a bench of justices AK Patnaik and SJ Mukhopadhaya said. The decision won’t apply to the present lot of MPs, MLAs or other lawmakers who have filed their appeals after conviction in lower courts. The verdict holds the promise to clean up the political system and restrain political parties from putting up candidates with criminal records.
So far so good. But our enthusiasm needs to be tempered. How long does it take for a person to be tried and convicted in the country? The average pendency time for cases, according to the National Litigation Policy document, is 15 years. It is normal for cases involving politicians to keep dragging for years. Since many of them are politically motivated and foisted by governments in power on political rivals, there is a vested interest in keeping the cases lingering for political benefits. Adjournments come in handy here. Faster conviction in case of politicians would help cleanse the system better. Who’s going to ensure that?
The logical next step to today’s verdict should be fast-tracking of criminal cases against people’s representatives. The Supreme Court has already asked for suggestion from the government over the matter—in the cases involving crimes against women though—and it could go way in addressing the problem of criminals in higher representative institutions. But is it that easy?
Everything in trial of criminal cases boils down to investigation and thus, to the police. While the judiciary normally takes the flak for delay in concluding cases, the real culprit are the police. The police are normally under pressure, usually from politically bosses, to proceed with the investigation, particularly against those powerful, with deliberate slowness. Moreover, there is hardly any mechanism to ensure that investigation is of good quality and after much delay won’t flat in the court. The denial of the fundamental right of the accused to be heard within a reasonable frame of time is normal given the obvious lacunae in the investigation mechanism. Unless this issue is addressed first, there is little hope of good trials and quick convictions.
The court’s judgement is pleasant to the senses but it’s still a long way to go before we have a criminal-free political system. Don’t be surprised if politicians try to find a way around it.
