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Decriminalisation of politics
Why in news?
- The Supreme Court directed political parties to publish online the pending criminal cases of their candidates
- It also urged Parliament to bring a “strong law” to cleanse political parties of leaders facing trial for serious crimes.
- Rapid criminalisation of politics cannot be arrested by merely disqualifying tainted legislators.
- But should begin by “cleansing” political parties
Onus on Parliament
- The court said Parliament should frame a law that makes it obligatory for political parties to remove leaders charged with:
- “heinous and grievous” crimes, such as rape, murder and kidnapping,
- and refuse ticket to offenders in both parliamentary and Assembly polls.
SC observation
- It ensures that ordinary voters can have an “informed choice” about who he or she has to vote for in a country which already “feels agonised when money and muscle power become the supreme power”.
- The Chief Justice said criminals in power are nothing but a liability to this country.
- Their presence in power strikes at the roots of democracy.
- Criminalisation of politics and corruption, especially at the entry level of elections, has become a national and economic terror.
- It is a disease which is self-destructive and becoming immune to antibiotics
- "There is a steady increase in the level of criminality creeping into politics," the Supreme Court observed in the judgment.
Full disclosures
- The court directed that candidates should divulge their criminal past to the Election Commission in “block letters.”
- Candidates should make a full disclosure of the criminal cases pending against them to the political parties under whose banner they intend to contest the polls.
- The parties, in turn, should put up the complete details of their candidates on their websites for public consumption.
- Further, both the candidate and the political party should declare the criminal antecedents of the former in widely-circulated newspapers.
- Finally, both the candidate and the political party should give “wide publicity” to the criminal record of the former by airing it on TV channels, not once, but thrice after the filing of nomination papers
Source
The Hindu