Our Parliament free from people with criminal records. Will it ever be a reality? With bad indications emerging about the upcoming 16th Lok Sabha, it seems it will always remain a dream.
Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch on 06 March made public a report about candidates announced by various political parties in their first list for the Lok Sabha elections 2014.
Of a total of 203 candidates announced by 02 March 2014, some 70 are those who have fought assembly or Lok Sabha polls in the past. Thirty Four (49%) of these 70 candidates had 224 criminal cases together as per their affidavits they filed with Election Commission in the last elections. Such candidates have been fielded by all major political parties.
Shiv Sena has 12 out of 14 candidates (86%) with criminal cases, BJP has 13 out of 32 (41%) candidates with criminal cases, NCP has 8 out of 13 (62%) candidates with criminal cases and AIADMK has 1 out of 6 (17%) candidates with criminal cases. Congress has not yet announced its candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Out of the 70 sitting/former legislators (who are in first list of candidates), 29 are sitting Lok Sabha MPs. Out of these 29 MPs, 18 (62%) had declared criminal cases against themselves in their previous election affidavits.
These are certainly bad signs for the new Lok Sabha – the lower house of Indian parliament, the highest legislative body of world’s largest democracy. Despite tall claims of political parties to clean the system of corruption and crime, they are the first to resort to money and muscle power to gain or retain power. And for this, they never shy from fielding any one ignoring all criminal charges and cases against him.
But only parties are not responsible for making tainted people our representatives. We the voters have also our share in this sin. Vote is the only tool in our hand to shape our parliament as per our dream. If we want to make parliament free from people with criminal records, then we will have to exercise our voting power very carefully.
The democracy is being hijacked by political parties by imposing candidates with criminal back ground on us. Parties give absurd logic — the candidates with clean image cannot win — to justify this crime. The Indian citizens are left helpless to elect from these criminals.
The provision of NOTA is useless rather helping the criminals to win easily unless it is made effective to change the result. A strong movement is desirable to make NOTA effective if we want to clean our politics. It is true a change in mindset of society is required to use the voting right with responsibility and by rising above selfish and prejudiced behavior.
We will be voting in April-May 2014 for the 16th Lok Sabha. Before the voting day, history and background of every candidate will have become public. But the big question is: Will we be swayed by caste, creed and political affiliation or will the honesty and clean image of a candidate be our only guide?
