MPs with criminal cases

About 29 per cent of the candidates elected to the Lok Sabha in the just-concluded election has ‘serious’ criminal charges against them. This has been stated by an analysis carried out by two leading organizations called Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) which is based on the information that the candidates had provided in their affidavits enclosed with their nomination papers. The agencies have also said that the absolute number of MPs with ‘serious’ criminal charges against them has been worked out to be 159. The news of the analysis, which has been published on the front page of this newspaper on Sunday, also states that as many as 10 of the winning candidates have been convicted by courts of law for various offences that they had committed. The 10 such MPs include five from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), four from the Congress party and one from the YSR Congress Party. What is even more alarming is that at least eleven MPs have declared that there are cases of murder against them. These include two from Assam, they being Naba Kumar Sarania (Independent MP from Kokrajhar who has won for the second consecutive term) and Haren Singh Bey (newly-elected BJP MP from the Autonomous constituency comprising the three hill districts). Important to recall, both of them were earlier important members of two different armed militant organizations, and that both of them have come out, surrendered and chosen the democratic path to make their voices heard. Besides Haren Singh Bey, there are four more MPs who have murder cases pending against them who are all from the BJP; one among them is newly-elected Bhopal MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur. The Bahujan Samaj Party too has an MP who has murder charges against him, one is from the Congress, one from the NCP, and one from the YSR Congress Party. More alarming is that three of the members elected to the 17th Lok Sabha also have cases related to crime against women pending against them. They are Saumitra Khan of the BJP, Hibi Eden of the Congress and Kuruva Gorantla Madhav of the YSR Congress Party. The two organizations have also given a party-wise break-up of the 159 MPs who have ‘serious’ criminal cases against them. While the BJP tops the list with 87 MPs, the Congress comes second with 19 MPs. Others are – eight from the JD-U, six from the DMK, and four from Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress. The above – if true – does not speak very well of a section of our newly-elected MPs. There should be a debate in the Lok Sabha itself on the question of whether persons having ‘serious’ allegations of criminal cases, including crimes against women and children, should be allowed to contest elections at all. There should be debates outside Parliament too, say in schools, colleges and universities, in the community organisations and so on. People in Meghalaya may recall that an MLA who was arrested on allegations of trafficking and raping a minor girl was elected to the State Assembly last year.