About 36% Rajya Sabha Candidates declared criminal cases against themselves: ADR | Current Affairs | Vision IAS
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    About 36% Rajya Sabha Candidates declared criminal cases against themselves: ADR

    Posted 26 Feb 2024

    Updated 27 Mar 2024

    2 min read

    • Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) published a report based on analysis of criminal background, financial, education, and other details of candidates contesting Rajya Sabha polls later this month.

     

    • Criminalization of Politics (CoP): Includes direct entry of criminals into political parties and legislature, through elections and use of criminal methods and tactics to influence political processes and procedures.

     

    • Current status of CoP in India [ADR Report (Sep, 2023)]
      • 40% sitting MPs have declared criminal cases against themselves.
      • 25% sitting MPs have declared serious criminal cases such as murder, crimes against women, etc., against themselves.

     

    • Reasons for CoP: Lack of inner-party democracy among political parties, nexus between criminals and political parties, narrow self-interest of people based identities like caste, religion, etc.

     

    • Impact of CoP: Undermining democracy and electoral processes, weakened governance and rule of law by making law-breakers into law-makers, negative role models for youth, etc.

     

    • Measures taken against CoP
      • Legislative: Section 8(3) of Representation of People Act, 1951 disqualifies legislators convicted for a sentence of at least 2 years for a period of 6 years since his release.
      • Judicial pronouncements: Supreme Court ordered mandatory publication of criminal records of candidates by political parties (Public Interest Foundation Case, 2018).

     

    Important Recommendations regarding CoP

    • Disqualification on framing of charge for certain offenses [Law Commission (244th Report)].
    • State funding of elections to reduce cost of elections and entry of black money in politics. [Dinesh Goswami Committee (1990) and Indrajit Gupta Committee (1998)]
    • Institutionalization and legislation for political parties to ensure inner-party democracy. (NCRWC, 2002)
    • Tags :
    • • Criminalization of Politics
    • Section 8(3) of Representation of People Act, 1951
    • Public Interest Foundation Case, 2018
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