Fodder scam lesson

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Politicians have blocked the passage of a tough law to deal with corruption in high places but two court verdicts of the past week show that the existing legal provisions are sufficient to bring offenders to book if only the authorities have the will to act.

In these cases trial courts convicted and jailed two former Bihar chief ministers, two members of Parliament and three senior Indian Administrative Service officers on corruption charges.

Lalu Prasad Yadav, who headed two governments between 1990 and 1997 and Jagannath Mishra, who was at the helm thrice before him, are the convicted former chief ministers. They, along with Lok Sabha member Jagdish Sharma, were convicted in one of about 50 cases registered in connection with the Bihar fodder scam.

In another case, Rajya Sabha member Rasheed Masood was convicted for allegedly selling seats in several medical colleges.

Yadav, Sharma and Masood became the first MPs to lose their seats in terms of the Supreme Court ruling disqualifying persons convicted and jailed for two years or more from seeking or holding elective posts.

If the tortuous course of the cases against these leaders indicates how systemic failures help the corrupt to get away, it also makes clear that if existing laws are implemented effectively the guilty can be brought to book.

The fodder scam cases arose out of continuous loot of the treasury for at least two decades. What began as a small-time activity of low-ranking officials gradually grew into a huge fraud of which top bureaucrats and political functionaries up to the level of the chief minister also became beneficiaries.

The modus operandi was to fabricate records of livestock in farms under the animal husbandry department and draw funds to buy equipment for the non-existent farms and fodder and medicine for the non-existent cattle. The loot was of the order of Rs9.40 billion.

The Comptroller and Auditor General, the constitutional authority who scrutinises government accounts, informed the Chief Minister of Bihar in 1985 that there was heavy delay in the submission of monthly accounts by the state treasury and this indicated the possibility of temporary embezzlement. Later chief ministers too were warned similarly but no one took remedial action, possibly because the high-up had been drawn into the scam by then.

In 1992, Bidhu Bhushan Dwivedi, a police inspector, stumbled upon the racket and submitted a report which hinted at chief ministerial level involvement in it. He was transferred and suspended. The high court later reinstated him and he became a key witness in the scam cases.

The fraudsters’ goose was cooked when Amit Khare, a young IAS officer serving as deputy commissioner, acting on information, raided animal husbandry offices in his district and seized records which contained clinching evidence of the scam. The media attention that followed made it impossible to sweep the dirt under the carpet. Khare is now a joint secretary in the central government.

Acting on a public interest petition, the Supreme Court entrusted the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Yadav, who was chief minister at that time, had to step down. He later served as a minister in the central government but the cases against him continued. Those convicted with him include 13 government officials, three of them members of the IAS, and 20 fodder suppliers.

The case against Rasheed Masood dates back to 1990-91 when he was Health Minister in the VP Singh government. He had begun his parliamentary career as a Lok Dal member and was in the Samajwadi Party before joining the Congress.

According to Transparency International, 86 per cent of the participants in the survey it held to prepare the Global Corruption Barometer 2013 said Indian political parties were corrupt. Other institutions in the list, in descending order of perceived corruption, are: Police (75 per cent), Parliament/legislatures (65 per cent), Public officials (65 per cent), education system (61 per cent), Medical and health (56 per cent), Business/private sector (50 per cent), Judiciary (45 per cent), Religious bodies (44 per cent), Media (41 per cent), NGOs (30 per cent) and Military (20 per cent).

When corruption is so pervasive, tracking and jailing the offenders is a mammoth task. A stiff law cannot, by itself, take the country far if the political and bureaucratic machinery, which must implement it, is highly corrupt. The most important fodder scam lesson is that a few honest men can make a difference.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, October 8, 2013.

Flawed bid to clean up politics

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The judiciary, in two landmark judgements delivered last week, severely restricted the right of criminal elements to enter electoral politics.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court, while disposing of two public interest petitions, took away the privilege of retaining their elective posts which convicted members of Parliament and state legislatures had enjoyed all along, holding it unconstitutional.

Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act lays down that a person convicted and sentenced to imprisonment shall be disqualified from holding an elective office for six years from the date of conviction. It, however, permits a sitting MP or MLA who files an appeal against his conviction to retain the elective post until the legal process is exhausted. The court ruled that different standards could not be applied to those who hold elective posts and those who do not.

On Thursday, the court, rejecting an appeal filed by the Election Commission, upheld a Patna high court ruling that a person in lawful custody, whether convicted of a crime or not, cannot contest elections as he does not have the right to vote while in prison and has, therefore, ceased to be an elector.

“The Law temporarily takes away the power of such persons to go anywhere near the election scene,” the apex court said.

Both the judgements were delivered by a two-member bench comprising AK Patnaik and SJ Mukhopadhyaya. Both involve interpretation of provisions of the Representation of the People Act, passed in 1951, ahead of the first general elections to Parliament and state legislatures, held during 1951-52, in terms of the Constitution which came into force in 1950.

Political parties which cautiously welcomed the first judgement as a step towards checking presence of criminals in elective bodies were forced to rethink their position when the second judgement brought home the wide sweep of the cleansing process they have set in.

The judgements have put a question mark over the political future of thousands of politicians who are facing prosecution in criminal cases or awaiting decision on appeals against their conviction. The court has made it clear that the new ruling will only apply prospectively. Convicted MPs and MLAs holding on to their seats on the strength of bail granted by courts are, therefore, safe for the present.

Thanks to an earlier Supreme Court judgement, it is now mandatory for candidates seeking election to Parliament or to state legislatures to file two affidavits, one listing their assets and liabilities and the other disclosing involvement in criminal cases, if any. The Election Commission puts the documents on the web, and print and electronic media report their highlights.

Accordingly, voters have access to information about the antecedents of the candidates but their criminal records do not appear to adversely affect their choice. In the absence of any reliable studies, it is difficult to conclude whether the voters feel intimidated or favour those with criminal backgrounds on the basis of narrow loyalties based on factors such as caste and religion.

According to the National Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms, civil society bodies actively pursuing the goal of cleansing politics of criminal elements, 1,460 persons currently functioning as MPs and MLAs have admitted in their affidavits to being involved in criminal cases. This constitutes a little over 30 per cent of the total of 4,807 elected representatives whose affidavits were analysed. The criminal charges against 688 of them (14 per cent of the total) are of a serious nature.

As many as 305 MPs and MLAs of the Congress party (21 per cent of the party’s total) and 313 of the Bharatiya Janata Party (11 per cent of the total) are involved in criminal cases.

Seventy-four per cent of the MLAs of Jharkhand state, 58 per cent of those of Bihar and 47 per cent of those of Uttar Pradesh have criminal records. The small northeastern state of Manipur is the only one with no tainted legislator.

While the Supreme Court may have acted with the best of intentions, it has unwittingly provided unscrupulous politicians belonging to more than a dozen parties which wield power in the different states a means to subvert the democratic process. They can keep inconvenient rivals out of the poll arena by arresting them on trumped-up charges. This was, in fact, what the Jammu and Kashmir administration did from 1953 to 1975 to prevent estranged former Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah and his supporters from making a bid for power. -- Gulf Today, July 16, 2013.