Any argument that has even a half-measure of merit in it can be made to sound unreasonable by twisting it and taking it to absurd lengths. The response of politicians – across the spectrum – to the Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that a person who is in the lawful custody of either the police of the judiciary cannot contest an election to a legislative body illustrates this axiom at work.
Virtually every party spokesperson claimed on camera that the Supreme Court’s intervention – in the interest of decriminalising politics – was a welcome initiative.
But even as they were trotting out this proforma incantation in support of the judicial initiative, you could see their visceral opposition to the proposal coming a mile off.
“But,” said virtually every one of those party spokespersons, right on cue. “But this proposal, however well-intentioned has scope for mischief… It can be abused by ruling parties – at the Centre and in the States – to jail opposition leaders on frivolous charges – and bar them from contesting elections.”
Parties across the spectrum – who can’t seem to agree on anything else – stuck to the same ritualistic articulation. “Welcome move, but… ”
The absurd lengths to which they went to criticise the Supreme Court ruling as infringing on democratic principles manifested itself in the worst-case scenario they cited. Even an arrest for a traffic offence is enough to ‘disqualify’ a potential candidate from contesting the election, they claimed.
Such a characterisation is patently untrue, and in any case addresses the wrong problem. The Supreme Court expressly laid down that the bar on contesting elections would apply only during the pendency of the period in which the potential candidates were in lawful custody. Even if s/he is out on bail, the bar on contesting doesn’t apply.
In any case, in examples such as the one that the politicians cited – involving a traffic offence, for instance – the scope for prolonged incarceration is fairly limited. By its very nature, therefore, the Supreme Court’s ruling (which upheld a ruling in 2004 by the Patna High Court) applies only to serious allegations of crimes – like murder or kidnapping or rape (of the sorts that many of our honourless legislators and parliamentarians face).
But beyond all this microdetails of the Supreme Court’s ruling, it is hard to come to terms with the perverse nature of the opposition from within the political establishment in its entirety to initiative that addresses what can only be called a blot on our democracy: of seeing criminals in politics.
Purists in Constitutional law and democratic propriety may have reason to be concerned over the judicial activism on the part of the Supreme Court that has prompted such extraordinary interventions in recent days. (On Wednesday, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that convicted legislators and parliamentarians lose their right to public office from the moment of their conviction.)
But the criminalisation of politics is no less “undemocratic” – in fact, it is arguably more so – and yet, the political establishment would rather be seen to be defending it than whole-heartedly welcoming the Supreme Court initiative.
If the parties are genuinely concerned about the infinite capacity of ruling parties to use the criminal justice system to ‘fix’ political opponents, that is where their sense of outrage should be directed – not at the Supreme Court which is retroactively carrying out the king of electoral reforms that have long been promised but never delivered.
And yet, for a generation and more of vindictive politics, none of the parties – at the Centre and in the States – has taken this up with earnestness. And yet today they are ready and willing to cite the abuse of the criminal justice as the reason why they oppose the well-intentioned and justiciable intervention of the Supreme Court . What’s particularly galling is that it is the political establishment that must bear the blame for the failure to decriminalise politics.
