Political parties continue nominating criminal-background candidates

As the general election is knocking at the door and political parties keep busy declaring their candidates for different Parliamentary constituencies, an advocacy group has come out with a shocking revelation that every major party of India continues nominating candidates with criminal backgrounds.

The National Election Watch (NEW), an active polls observer group and also a campaigner for democracy and governance in India has disclosed that the oldest party of the country, Indian National Congress has nominated at least four candidates with criminal background in Uttar Pradesh.

“Out of 24 candidates (declared by INC on March 4 for UP), we found that not less than four candidates were with criminal background,” informed Anil Bairwal of National Election Watch.

Speaking to this writer from New Delhi, the National Coordinator of the forum also said that the NEW looked at 24 candidates declared by INC and checked the records of these candidates with over 50,000 records accumulated since 2003.

“We found it amazing that like the BJP or SP, the Congress also named party candidates with criminal backgrounds in its list. We were able to find affidavits for 19 Congress candidates, which were filed in previous polls. Out of these 19 affidavits 4 (i.e. 21%) have criminal background,” Bairwal added.

Mentionable that the NEW is a nationwide campaign comprising of more than 1200 NGO and other citizen led organizations working on electoral reforms, improving democracy and governance in India. Active in almost all States of the country, the New has been monitoring the candidates (for 2009 Lok Sabha polls) declared by political parties.

Clarifying about the criminal charges that include criminal intimidation with death threat and assaulting public servants, Bairwal also informed that the information of candidates declared by the party had been matched in the existing database of NEW which is based on affidavits filed by these candidates in earlier elections.

Commenting on the list of candidates for UP, the coordinator of NEW’s UP chapter, I C Dwivedi said that the presence of politicians with criminal background has always been high in Uttar Pradesh and has reached to such an extent that both the Legislative Assembly and the Parliament are today unable to function because of these elements.

“The indiscipline in houses has reached new heights as can be seen from recent UP assembly and Parliaments sessions and we must ensure that only clean and capable candidates are elected to Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies,” added Dwivedi, who once served Uttar Pradesh as its police chief.

It may be mentioned that a non-political, non-partisan and a non-governmental organization titled Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) led a number of other organizations to file a PIL in the Supreme Court (in December 1999), following which the apex court of India made an order on March 13, 2003 to disclose the criminal, financial and educational background of all contesting candidates in the polls.

The ADR has since been doing the job of election watch in almost every State Assembly and Lok Sabha polls. One of the founder members of ADR, Prof Jagdeep Chhokar, who once served as the dean of IIM Ahmedabad while commenting on the issue said, “Civil Society Organisations all over the country are demanding that politics in the country should be made free from crime. The political parties should listen to public demand and stop declaring candidates with criminal backgrounds.”