The truth about a 'criminal-free' State
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: July 12 , 2013 -

The message is short but clear: "If you are convicted, then stay out, there is no place for you."

This is what the Supreme Court of India has conveyed to all the elected representatives. On a busy day of passing orders and disposing cases, the Supreme Court of India on July 10 spared some time to get back to one of its reserved verdicts and came up with a landmark judgement that could cleanse Indian politics of lawmakers with criminals antecedents by disqualifying them from being member of Parliament or State Assemblies if they were found guilty of criminal charges.

Acting on three Public Interest Litigations (PILs) filed by lawyer Lily Thomas, Lok Prahari, an NGO, and SN Shukla contending that Section 8 (4) of the Representation of People Act (RPA), which says that a lawmaker cannot be disqualified in the event of his/her conviction in a criminal case if he or she files an appeal in the higher court, was leading to criminalisation of politics; an apex court bench of Justices A.K. Patnaik and S.J. Mukhopadhaya has held the said controversial section of RPA as ultra vires and ruled that convicted lawmakers must be disqualified immediately after being found guilty in a criminal case and they cannot be protected from disqualification on the ground of pendency of the appeal against their conviction in higher courts in future.

In short, the Supreme Court has scraped the controversial Section 8 (4) of Representation of the People Act, which protects tainted lawmakers from disqualification even after conviction by offering a three-month widow period to appeal against the convictions and keep their seats in intact while those appeals were pending in higher courts.

This is indeed a landmark judgement that could strike at the very heart of the country's political system where nearly one-third of lawmakers at the Centre and States are said to be facing criminal cases.

According to a report prepared by National Election Watch and Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), out of the 4,835 MPs and MLAs in the country, 1,448 of them are facing criminal cases.

When it comes down to the number of MLAs in each State facing criminal cases, the data drawn from the affidavits submitted by the MLAs themselves to the Election Commission at the time of last polls has shown that Jharkhand, whose residents have just gotten rid of a long president's rule with the JMM-Congress staking claim to form the new government, has the highest percentage of MLAs with criminal cases at 72 per cent or 55 tainted MLAs in all.

As expected, Bihar comes in the second with 58 per cent or 140 of those occupying the Assembly alleged to have criminal background. And the next in line on the shameful list to round off the top three 'criminal-run' Indian States is Maharashtra at 51 per cent, which has even surpassed the country's largest State, Uttar Pradesh (47 per cent).

Interestingly or shockingly, Manipur has emerged as the poster boy in this infamous list with no MLA ever booked for crime.

Does this call for celebration? Not, at all.

In fact, absence of police record on the criminal activities of our elected MLAs only goes to show that something is very rotten in Manipur.

Mind you, we live in a place where even Advocate General dared not open his mouth despite the bullet fired from the gun held by an honourable Minister pierced his chest needing treatment for months, forget about lodging any complaint report to the police.

This is the truth about 'criminal-free' Manipur.