Towards cleaner politics

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India’s Supreme Court last week enlarged the scope of the legal framework, much of it designed by itself, to reduce the scope for political corruption. 

Money power and muscle power have been identified since long as the bane of electoral politics in this country, which, by virtue of its population, is the world’s largest democracy.

The Representation of the People Act, enacted in 1951, ahead of the first general elections, provides that persons convicted of certain charges, including corruption, will incur certain disqualifications. The law has undergone some revision since it was first enacted but undesirable persons continue to be elected. 

In 1999, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), set up by a group of professors of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, initiated public interest litigation which resulted in a Supreme Court judgment directing all candidates to file affidavits disclosing information relating to their educational qualifications, involvement in criminal cases, if any, and the family’s assets. 

Since then all candidates have been filing affidavits on the lines mentioned by the court and the authorities have been promptly posting them on the web. But there has been no improvement in the quality of the elected representatives. On the comtrary, there are indications of deterioration.

After analysing the affidavits filed by those elected in the last three elections, the ADR reported that the number of Lok Sabha members with criminal cases had gone up from 24 per cent in 2004 to 30 per cent in 2009 and to 34 per cent in 2014. 

Over one-third of the 282 members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party were accused in criminal cases when the party picked them to contest the elections, and over one-fifth were facing serious charges. Of the 18 members of BJP ally Shiv Sena 15 were involved in criminal cases.

All four members of the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal and four of the five of the Nationalist Congress Party were facing criminal charges. Congress MPs had a comparatively low criminal record: 18 per cent were involved in cases, and those facing serious charges were only seven per cent. 

Another ADR report said comparison of affidavits showed that the assets of 165 MPs who won re-election in 2014 had risen, on an average, by 137 per cent in their previous term. 

In 2013, The Supreme Court, modifying a disqualification clause, ruled that a member of Parliament or of a state legislature will lose his seat immediately if convicted and sentenced to a jail term of two years or more.

Parliament had earlier provided for keeping disqualification in abeyance until the member exhausted the avenues of appeal. The Manmohan Singh government planned to enact legislation to nullify the court verdict but dropped it as Rahul Gandhi was against it.

On Friday the apex court ruled that a member of Parliament or of a State legislature will lose his seat if found to be in possession of assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. It wanted the candidates’ affidavits to include the assets of their dependents, besides those of the spouses.

“If assets of a legislator and his/her associates (spouses and dependents) increase without bearing and relationship to their known sources of income, the only logical inference that can be drawn is that there is some abuse of the legislator’s constitutional office,” it said. 

The court passed the order on a petition filed by Lok Prahari, a non-governmental organisation. It had alleged there has been an increase in the assets of 26 members of the Lok Sabha, 11 of the Rajya Sabha and 257 of state legislatures. 

The Central Board of Direct Taxes, which scrutinised the affidavits of some of the elected members, informed the court that there were discrepancies in the statements of seven Lok Sabha members and 98 MLAs. There was prima facie evidence of huge increase in their assets and the matter needed to be probed further.

While the measures devised by the court may help to remove some corrupt elements, they do not offer a solution to political corruption, which is a systemic problem. When Lalu Prasad in Bihar and Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu were forced to step down they retained their hold on the administration through handpicked chief ministers. While Jayalalithaa chose a trusted colleague to hold the fort for her, Lalu Prasad’s choice was his wife, Rabri Devi. She came to office with no political experience and served as chief minister for six and a half years. 

The public have evinced little interest in verifying claims made by candidates in affidavits. Modi and his Cabinet colleague Smriti Irani have dodged efforts to check their educational qualifications. 

There can be no clean politics while elections are an expensive affair and the voters are not ready to take a close look at the antecedents of candidates seeking election. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 20, 2018.

Modi in ‘now or never’ battle

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India’s voters, numbering more than 814 million, have been called upon to choose 543 members of Parliament as a first step towards the formation a new government in place of the Manmohan Singh administration, which completes its current term in May.

The schedule prepared by the Election Commission provides for polling in nine phases spread over five weeks, from April 7. That leaves the political parties with little time to complete the selection of candidates.

The Congress, which heads the ruling United Progressive Alliance, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads the rival National Democratic Alliance, have more at stake in this election than any other party. Both are expected to contest between 400 and 450 seats. So far they have not finalised candidates for even half of the seats.

The election presents the first real test for Rahul Gandhi who is in the process of taking over the stewardship of the Congress party from his mother, Sonia Gandhi, and is almost sure to be the prime minister if it is in a position to form a new government. He faces an uphill task as the party, which has been continuously in power for 10 years, enters the fray with its burden of double incumbency compounded by a spate of corruption scandals.

He picked up the reins too late to be able to project himself as a credible agent of change capable of redeeming the party. He could stop the government from going ahead with some unpopular ideas but he could not push through legislative measures which he claimed were important tools needed to fight corruption.

In the event, few credit Rahul Gandhi with the ability to avert the electoral reverse that awaits the party. However, a poor poll performance is unlikely to pose any serious threat to his leadership of the party since he has inherited it as the heir of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

The BJP, which lost two successive elections under the leadership of former deputy prime minister Lal Kishen Advani, is making an all-out bid for power this time under three-time Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

An indefatigable campaigner, Modi has created tremendous enthusiasm not only among the party’s Hindutva clientele but also among large sections of urban youth who have responded enthusiastically to his call to put divisive issues behind and unite for development.

The Janata Dal (United), Bihar’s ruling party and a long-time ally of the BJP, broke away from the NDA the moment the party named Modi its prime ministerial candidature, citing his alleged role in facilitating the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat. That left the NDA without any constituent with secular credentials.

However, the BJP later improved its image somewhat by forging an alliance with another Bihar party, Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party.

Paswan had resigned from the NDA government in 2002 to vote against it in Parliament on the issue of the Gujarat riots. His return to the NDA indicates readiness to work under Modi if he becomes the Prime Minister, forgetting the 2002 carnage. 

The Telugu Desam party of Andhra Pradesh, which, too, is a former NDA constituent, is also in talks with the BJP and ready to make up with Modi.

However, two other parties which were NDA partners when it was in power, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, appear determined to pursue an independent course.

West Bengal, with 42 seats in the Lok Sabha, and Tamil Nadu, with 39 seats, are comparatively big players and the two chief ministers are seeking to maximise their parties’ parliamentary strength with a view to enhancing their role in national affairs.

Mamata Banerjee recently said that she was ready to accept Jayalalithaa or Bahujan Samaj Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati as the prime minister. 

These developments must worry Narendra Modi, for whom this is a ‘now or never’ battle. The BJP named him as its prime ministerial candidate under pressure from the Hindutva powerhouse, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, overruling the objections of Advani and other national level leaders. If he fails to land the top job, critics within the party are sure to attribute his rejection by the electorate to the odium of the Gujarat riots and the RSS may not be able to persuade the party to nominate him again. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 11, 2014.

A spanner in presidential works

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

The signs of a presidential race in the making have dissipated somewhat and the parliamentary elections, due in a few months, may now follow the conventional pattern. The credit for this goes primarily to the new kid on the block, the Aam Admi Party.

With regional parties and small national parties gravitating towards the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance or the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, before or after the elections, India has been going through a phase of coalition governments for some years.

In the elections of 2004 and 2009 the combined vote share of the Congress and the BJP was below 50 per cent. This meant that a majority of the voters were already with regional parties and small national parties. With their vote share expected to go up in this year’s elections, ambitious leaders of some of the parties began eying the prime minister’s chair.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, whom the BJP picked as its prime ministerial candidate, altered the political scenario with a bold campaign in the recent assembly elections in four northern states, which the media had dubbed as a semi-final. He succeeded in creating an impression that the final will be a presidential kind of race between him and Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party’s presumptive prime ministerial nominee.

The BJP’s success in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and its emergence as the largest single party in Delhi state appeared to confirm pollsters’ forecast that the BJP will emerge as the largest single party in the next Lok Sabha and earn the right to form the government. Modi sought to boost his prospects further by setting the goal of an absolute majority for his party.

As the implications of the Delhi verdict sank in, political observers found it necessary to reassess the situation. The AAP, which blocked the BJP’s return to power, was able to form the government in the state with the Congress extending support from outside. It has now announced plans to contest the Lok Sabha elections, raising an alarm in the coteries of the established parties.

Many imagined the AAP will confine itself to urban constituencies where it can hope to replicate the Delhi story. But the party has said it will field as many candidates as possible, the only restricting factors being its organisational limitations and the availability of suitable candidates.

As in the Delhi state elections, the AAP hopes to cash in on the people’s disgust with the corrupt ways of the mainstream parties. In Yogendra Yadav, its ideologue, the party has a valuable strategic planner. He has been studying Indian electoral behaviour for many years and is possibly more knowledgeable than anyone else in the country on the social dynamics of the polity at both the national and regional levels.

Yadav recently spoke of AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal as an alternative prime ministerial candidate. Kejriwal quickly dismissed the suggestion, which had the potential to bolster Modi’s bid to reduce the elections to a one-to-one fight for the top post, glossing over the complex problems for which the people are looking for solutions. 

The Modi juggernaut was already slowing down when Kejriwal threw a spanner in the presidential works. It will be back on the road again after a re-jig but it remains to be seen whether it can regain the lost momentum.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader J Jayalalithaa has set before her party the ambitious target of grabbing all 39 of the state’s Lok Sabha seats as well as Puducherry’s lone seat so as to give her a big role in national politics. Other state party leaders are sure to follow her lead with a view to maximising their bargaining power.

The Congress party, whose image is tarnished by corruption scandals, is yet to put its act together. Its governmental and organisational wings inspire little confidence. The party’s rank and file view Rahul Gandhi as its prime ministerial face, even though there has been no formal announcement to that effect.

He recently forced the Centre to abandon a proposed law to protect tainted legislators and got the Maharashtra government to re-examine its decision to reject the probe report on the Adarsh scam. Such stray interventions are not enough to convince the people that he can be the agent of change they are looking for. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 7, 2014.