[GJM] Only Criminals Must be Allowed to Contest Elections in India : Dr. M.K. Sherwani

[Sherwani Mustafa]

www.hindustantimes.com( March,17,07)
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MPs' panel rejects plan to bar 'criminals' from polls
Aloke Tikku & Chetan Chauhan
New Delhi, March 15, 2007
  ( Full text reproduced at the end)
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    In order to make our democratic institutions
strong and impart perfect maturity to our largest
democracy of the world, it is most imperative that the
Parliament must immediately make the following
amendments in the Constitution, the Representation of
the Peoples Act and other related enactments:

Minimum qualifications for the candidates aspiring to
contest elections:

1. For corporator : Must be accused of at teast two
robberies and five kidnappings

2. For MLA ( Legislative Assemblies):Must be accused
of  at least two murders and five dacoities.

3. For Member of Parliament : Must be accused of at
least five murders and ten dacoities.

4. For becoming a Minister both in the state and the
Centre: The minimum requirement is  that the candidate
must be accused of  at least five murders, ten
dacoities,  twenty robberies and fifty kidnappings.
 
 Explanation: If anybody has been convicted of any of
the offences mentioned  from clauses 1 to four, it
will be considered an additional qualification, and
efforts must be made to withdraw  the lesser competent
candidates ( those who are simply accused and not
convicted) from the electoral fray. 

 ----------------------------------------------- 
Dr. Mustafa Kamal Sherwani, LL.D.
Former President, All India Muslim Forum
3, Sherwani Nagar, Sitapur Road, Lucknow , India

Presently,Dean, Faculty of Law and Shariah
Zanzibar University, Tanzania


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MPs' panel rejects plan to bar 'criminals' from polls
Aloke Tikku & Chetan Chauhan
New Delhi, March 15, 2007
 
 There should be no bar on people including Abu Salem
contesting elections from jail; only if they are on
the run.

A parliamentary panel has rejected a proposal that
people against whom courts have framed charges for
heinous offences should be barred from contesting
elections. Instead, the committee recommended fast
track courts that would dispose of cases against
politicians within a six-month period.

It has also recommended striking out names of accused
pronounced proclaimed offenders by a court from the
voters' list. This would effectively bar fugitives
from the law as candidates need to be enrolled as
voters.

The committee headed by Congress MP EM Sudarsana
Natchiappan was asked to report on the Election
Commission-backed proposal to keep out criminals if a
court has found prima facie evidence against them. Abu
Salem at the back of his mind, Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh had last December asked for the report "at the
earliest".

"We are genuinely keen to end criminalisation of
politics," Natchiappan said, pointing that India
follows the Anglo-Saxon principle of presumed innocent
till proven guilty. The MP insisted that it would be
unfair to bar a person from contesting elections at
the stage of framing of charges by a court — a stage
where the accused does not get to defend himself and
question the available evidence — when he may be later
acquitted.

Political parties — that have blocked police reforms
for more than two decades — had also opposed the
disqualification proposal on the ground that police
investigations were not independent and controlled by
the political executive. The committee saw merit in
this argument; Natchiappan said the fear was real.

"Till police reforms take place and a proper system is
in place, we cannot open the floodgates," the MP said,
worried that pliant policemen would foist false cases
against their opponents to disqualify them. A vigilant
electorate and civil society, he suggested, was a
better insurance against criminals in legislature.

News reports on Abu Salem thinking of contesting
elections had prompted Chief Election Commissioner N
Gopalaswami to remind Manmohan Singh about the
"lurking danger" in October last year. Unless the law
is amended, Gopalaswami wrote, people like Salem
"could become Members of the august Houses of
Parliament and state legislatures".

The Law Commission had made a similar recommendation
in 1999; the National Commission to Review the Working
of the Constitution also came to the same conclusion
three years later. In July 2004, the election
commission sent its proposals on electoral reforms to
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh; keeping criminals out
was one of them.

But the opinion on the disqualification rule within
the UPA government is divided. The Union home ministry
objects to this rule and last month argued in favour
of status quo till the government found a "foolproof
or nearly a foolproof solution".

Union Law Minister HR Bhardwaj, however, had backed
the proposal, asserting that the accused may get
acquitted in some cases but this price had to be paid
in view of the "very pertinent dimensions of the
problem".

An estimate way back in 1996 had suggested that nearly
1,500 candidates in the parliamentary elections had
criminal records; 40 of them even got elected.

Around the same time, over 700 of the 4,072 sitting
MLAs in state assemblies had criminal records. A
Citizens Report on Governance and Development released
last year found nearly 25 per cent of the Lok Sabha
had one or the other criminal case registered against
them.

Email Aloke Tikku: atikku at hindustantimes.com
 
 


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