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For too long has the issue of candidates with criminal background who contest elections and some who eventually get elected, was restricted within the domain of heated debates and feelings of indignation. However, the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Rohinton F Nariman and Justice S. Ravindra Bhat took note of this "alarming" rise in candidates with criminal charges being in the fray and said it was high time the top court uses its extraordinary powers in the interest of informed citizenry. The apex court has issued a series of directives on political parties and government to respond within a time frame. The court’s indignation is reflected by the official statistics where, as many as 43% of the current Lok Sabha MPs who were elected in 2019 have criminal cases pending against them. The records also point out that in 2004, 24% of members of Parliament (MPs) had criminal cases pending against them, while in 2009, that went up to 30%, in 2014 to 34%. As per the court’s directive, all political parties that field candidates with criminal records must from now on tell the public why they have chosen tainted candidates over those with clean records. The Supreme Court also handed down a series of directions aimed at checking the criminalization of politics. Hitting out at the immorality of elections, the apex court clarified that the parties cannot cite the winnability of candidates as the only justification. The court ruled that it shall be mandatory for political parties during central and state elections to put out detailed information about candidates with criminal cases pending against them, including the nature of the offences. It ruled that parties must also list the reasons for selecting such candidates and state why others without criminal antecedents were not selected. The court also directed that the information should be published in one local vernacular newspaper, a national newspaper, and on the official social media platforms of the political party, including Facebook and Twitter. It added that these details must also be released on social media platforms that the political parties use. Researchers have found that such candidates with serious records seem to do well despite their public image, largely due to their ability to finance their own elections and bring substantive resources to their respective parties. Some voters tend to view such candidates through a narrow prism: of being able to represent their interests by hook or by crook. Winning by ‘hook or by crook’ has become the common denominator of Indian elections. It means that winning matters and nothing else. Thus, Indian democracy continues to be a sham where law breakers eventually become law makers. The Supreme Court had asked the centre in 2017, to frame a scheme to appoint special courts to exclusively try cases against politicians, and for political parties to publicise pending criminal cases faced by their candidates in 2018. This did not serve as deterrent to legislators with dubious credentials. Perhaps what would help is a rule that disallows candidates against whom charges have been framed in court for serious offences. While Parliament should consider an amendment to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the people themselves and NGOs should also launch campaigns against candidates with criminal background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By hook or by crook<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}