With a view to cleaning up politics from various impurities, the Supreme Court recently made two important judgments. One relates to criminal cases against politicians.
It said that criminal cases against MLAs can no more be withdrawn by the State Governments without consent of concerned High Courts. The second one relates to criminal antecedents of candidates contesting to Assembly/Parliament. It said the political party nominating a candidate must publish candidate’s criminal records within 48 hours of selection. The 2nd judgment is an extension of earlier judgment of the SC which by virtue of extraordinary jurisdiction vested with it had ruled for filing of affidavits by candidates mentioning criminal cases.
These two decisions no doubt are historic and will reduce intensity of criminalisation in politics to a great extent. There is no denying that all the successive Union Governments have failed to reform the election process.
Major national parties were found engaged in blame game over EVM and other issues as per their position in the Government or Opposition. There are many unsolved issues relating to electoral reforms. Loknayak Jayaprakash made election reform as a major plank of his ‘Sampurnakranti Movement.
The Janata Party which came to power in 1977 on the background of JP Movement failed to reform the electoral process and disintegrated within a few months due to ego clash among its leaders. The founding fathers of the constitution had apprehended such a plight in the time to come.
Dr Rajendra Prasad, President of Constituent Assembly in his address had emphasized on “straightforwardness and honesty of constitutional institutions” including the Election Commission for success of the democracy.
It is worth mentioning that Justice HR Khana, the lone dissenter in favour of fundamental rights in Habeas Corpus case famously known as “ADM Jabalpur VS Shivkant Shukla” during Emergency in a speech delivered on ‘implication of democracy for criminal justice’ reported in 1990 SSC reports (Vol-1) had said that that “Despite all the professed abhorrence of the use of
muscle power in the course of elections, a very large number of candidates do take aid of that. It may be that some make unabashed use of it with a view to intimidate voters for securing their votes whilemany others take the help of muscle power, not so much to apply coercion to the votes in the free exercise of their franchise but only as a matter of defensive strategy against the muscle power of rival candidates, the effect of all that is that the use of muscle power has become a regular feature of the electoral process”.
In the circumstances the moot question is that whether publication of criminal backgrounds alone would purify the election process? There are many other issues that need urgent attention. The influence of black money in election process is another threat to democratic polity which is rampant in last five decades.
Ceiling on the election expenditure is a mockery and unpractical. According to some Opposition leaders and election watchdog bodies, the Electoral Bond introduced in 2017 Union Budget suffers from various drawbacks.
Though such bonds are anonymous, the ruling party at the Centre can know who and how much was given to whom through good officers of banking system, ED and Income Tax networks. No industry would like to get the wrath of the Union Government by exposing its contribution to parties opposed to the ruling party at the Centre. The anti-defection law at present helps large scale defections engineered by ruling parties by lure of office and money which overturns public mandates. Time has come when any defection whether individually or in group should lead to disqualification of the concerned legislature.
Late Arun Jaitley on the matter of dissidence of some BJP MLAs of Karnataka in writing to Governor on change of leadership during UPA regime, had criticized the judicial verdict. The recent history of change of Governments in Goa, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh is enough to show the difference between preaching and practice.
Of course, in a democracy change of party is inevitable for persons when the member differs with leadership on ideological issues or to keep their self respect, but that would require his resignation from the post. The present position of law debarring persons convicted of two years or more is good; however, this should not affect political activists engaged in genuine political movements. Filling motivated cases against political adversaries is not new in India.
On the slightest pretext, sedition charge is made even against senior journalists if their journalistic activity is not to the like of ruling party. The successive Governments have misused or abused authority by engaging premier investigating agencies like IT, ED, CBI against political rivals.
In the circumstances, conviction or imprisonment in crimes like murder, Arms Acts, contraband materials, explosive substance, child abuse, misappropriation, theft, dacoity, corruption, drug use, terror, election related crimes etc can be ground for debarring a person from contest but not cases of political movements.
The experience during emergency reveals that our constitutional institutions failed to protect civil liberties in which lakhs of people including Gandhian leaders like Jayprakash Narayan, Moraji
Desai, Biju Patnaik, Chandrasekhar and others were imprisoned without trial. Some of whom contested election, won and formed a new Government that fully restored democracy.
In the past, political parties described some steps of the Election Commission as partisan that suited to the interest of the ruling party at the Centre. Issues like fixing election schedule to suit the ruling party remained common grievances. Normally, it is found that retired bureaucrats who are in good books of the Union Government are nominated to the EC.
The selection process needs to be changed to drawpublic confidence. Instead of retired bureaucrats, a retired Judge of the SC should be nominated as Chief Election Commissioner. A Committee consisting nominee of Chief Justice of Supreme Court, Law Minister, Speaker of Lok Sabha and two leaders of the two largest opposition parties in the Lok Sabha could be the members of such screening committee to select CEC and other members to strengthen independence of the EC. If judiciary could create the collegium process to select Judges which is not a part of original provision of Constitution
(Article-124), to strengthen judicial independence, strengthening democracy is equally important which requires the Constitution of a similar collegium for selection of members to the EC.
The issue of replacing voter identity card by Aadhaar Card to establish identity of voters is pending for a decision. Common people are familiar in using Aadhaar card for getting ration, vaccine and various schematic benefits. Therefore the Aadhaar card can be equally used for identity of voters which will check case of any impersonation.
(The writer is a former Deputy Speaker, Odisha Legislative Assembly. Views expressed are personal)