With several Member of Parliaments (MPs) cooling their heels in the jails on charges of corruption and many others waiting in the queue to enter the portals of Tihar jail, what transpired at the crucial Team Anna core committee meeting at Ralegan Siddhi on September 10 and 11 is likely to give shivers to the MPs who are already reeling from the tsunami of his Jan Lokpal Bill agitation which put the government on the back-foot.
The shocker for the government is Anna Hazare’s plan to write to the prime minister Manmohan Singh suggesting various electoral reforms that need to be undertaken in tandem with the steps to pass a strong Jan Lokpal Bill. The biggest sore point for the politicians is going to be the fact that Hazare is drafting a letter to the prime minister seeking his views on the right to recall a Member of Parliament and the right to reject candidates who stand for elections.
Imagine the reaction of the government as and when it gets this letter from Hazare. As of now nearly a third of MPs – 158 of 543 – in Parliament face criminal charges. Seventy four of them face serious charges such as murder and abduction. Many of the MPs including the Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi, Samajwadi Party MP Amar Singh, DMK MP Kannimozi who is the daughter of the former Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi , A Raja and others are breaking chappathis in Jail. What will happen to people like the RJD MP Lal Prasad Yadav who has 63 cases against him with the most infamous of them being the fodder scam if the government is forced to enact the right to recall a MP and the right to reject candidates who stand for elections?. Interestingly Lalu prasad yadav is member of standing committee which would look into lok pal bill!
MP’s facing criminal charges is not a new phenomena . It has preceded several times in the past. For instance in 1996 the then Union Communication Minister Sukhram went to jail on charges of corruption as he was accused of bestowing undue favour in the telecom equipment scam flouting tender norms. When CBI raided his residence they got 3 crore cash.He went to jail for 3 years.
Another MP who faced criminal charges was Sibu Soren. In 2005 Soren was forced to resign as Union coal minister after he was asked to appear as an accused in the Chirudhih massacre case, in which he was later acquitted.
The chief minister of Tamil Nadu ,Jayalalita has had her share of jail stay on charges of corruption. Due to an anti-incumbency wave and several allegations of corruption and malfeasance against her and her ministers, she lost power to the D.M.K in 1996, in a landslide defeat. Now she has bounced back and returned as the chief minister.
But the MP who made his party tremor and collapse because of corruption charges is A Raja , the main player in mother of all scams called 2g scam. He is accused of making government loose whooping 1 lakh seventy thousand crores!
one makes a list of politicians who have been accused of corruption then the list could become pretty long as there are several of them including Suresh Kalmadi, Madhu Koda, Reddy brothers etc.
The criminalization of politics is not confined to one or two parties but most of them are tarred with the same brush. BJP has maximum MPs having criminal cases – 42 MPs have criminal cases against them, out of which 17 MPs have serious criminal cases against them.
It has followed by congress – 41 MPs with criminal cases out of which 12MPs have serious charges against them. SP has 8 MPs with criminal cases outof which 7 has serious charges, followed by Shivsena which has 8 MPs with criminal charges out of which 3 have serious charges.
Though all the political parties publicly proclaim that they are opposed to giving tickets to people with criminal background, when the election comes everything changes. Instead of giving tickets to people who have clean character and track records, tickets are distributed to those people who have the element of “winability” among them even if they have questionable characters. Money-power,muscle-power, corrupt practices and unfair means are being freely employed to win the elections.
The reason why so many criminal elements enter into politics is not hard to seek. They feel that if they become a politician, then they can escape the long arm of the law as they themselves become law-makers.
In fact criminalization of politics has become one of the biggest blot for the Indian democracy where votes are purchased by notes and goondas and criminals are used to eliminate political rivals or capture booths. The sad part is that after committing heinous crimes many of these elements manage to extract tickets to contest elections and often make their way to the Parliament and Assemblies, which is the highest governing body in the country.
In the good old days politicians went to jail protesting against the British government. They went to jail for a noble cause of bringing freedom to India and the people of India saluted them. But now many of the MPs have gone to jail for corrupt practices.
Thus if the Anti Corruption leader Anna Hazare and his team starts agitation for electoral reforms with the thrust on Right to Recall an elected representative and a Right to Reject a candidate who is fighting elections, then there is every possibility that there could be a much bigger confrontation between Anna Hazare and the government in the months to come.
