Skip to main content
Source
greaterkashmir
Date
City
SRINAGAR

BJP may still be walking in air with grabbing 282 seats out of 545 and constituting the government single handedly but 24 of its MP’s that includes some ministers too, are facing criminal charges right now. These members include Uma Bharti and two Ex-Presidents of BJP M.M.Joshi and L.K.Advani who are undergoing the trail of Babri Masjid demolition. Also Sanju Balyan is a prominent name facing charges of involvement in Muzaffar nagar riots. After BJP, Shiv Sena with 24 members is at number second in the list. Collectively, NDA’s 32 members are accused of various crimes. And if found guilty, they according to Supreme Court’s recent declaration may suffer abrogation of their membership. This happened, BJP will need to rely on its allying parties to retain power because the number of its members will then fall to 258. These are the revelations made by two of the prominent organizations, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW), both of which work to cleanse politics from any impudent ingredient what so ever. 
This should be known that Supreme Court on 10th of July 2013 declared that under the ‘Representation of The People Act 8(1), 8(2), and 8(3)’ if any of the members, Parliament or Assembly, is found guilty, his/her membership will be put to an end. This historical decision taken by SC was based on the petition registered by SC’s lawyer Laila Thomas and Lok Prahari’s lawyer S.N.Shukla. Furthermore on 10th of March 2014 Supreme Court declared its word on the petition of an NGO ‘Public Interest Foundation’ that the members of Parliament and Assembly who are facing charges under the Representation of The People Act 8(1), 8(2) and 8(3), their trail should be conducted as soon as possible, at least within a year; and hearings should be carried on day-to-day basis. 
 ADR and NEW undertook the screening of 541 recently elected MPs, 57 among whom registered their acknowledgments of being accused of various criminal charges. ADR’s founder member and Ret. Professor of IIM Hyderabad Jagdeep Chokar in reference to one of PM’s speech in Rajya Sabha said that Prime Minister Narender Modi has promised this on floor that he by 2015 will washout the Parliament from all such controversial faces. Another prominent member Trilochan Shastri also has laid emphasis over the imperativeness of this matter, he appealed to the PM that most of the accused MPs are from BJP cadre, so on moral grounds, he should take this matter on fast track basis. Both ADR and NEW demanded that a resolution be passed in both the houses of parliament, following which these cases should be decided within a year after elections. 
 In a latest report, ADR and NEW has revealed that in terms of receiving donations also, political parties in India know no law. BJP, which claims itself to be an ideological party, here too has maintained the worst record. With regard to Charcoal and mining scam, BJP at that time marked their protest like anything. But highly known for aiding and abetting BJP itself, Aditya Birla Group’s name featured mainly in this scam which right now is under CBI inquiry. Bringing forth the donation network, ADR in its 21page report revealed that in the year 2012-13, six prominent political parties in India collectively received the donation of 991.2cr. The biggest portion went in Congress bag i.e. 425.69cr and current ruling party BJP was served 324.16cr. Likewise BSP, NCP, CPM and CPI received 87.63cr, 26.56cr, 126.09cr and 1.07 respectively. 
 This report by ADR was prepared keeping in consideration the figures under income tax return. According to which the donor who donates an amount more than 20,000, under Representation of The People Act 29(c), his name and address should be duly mentioned. But during the financial year 2012-13, the amount givers of 11.14cr have been kept anonymous. A strong appeal has been made in the report to bring the personal details of donors within the ambit of RTI. In most of the countries like USA, France, Germany, Brazil and Japan, personal details of donors are bound to be disclosed. While as in India, these details are kept hidden which very well describes the treacherous nature of political parties here. 
 But, in a country like India where democracy is seen as a sell-out, implementation of such laws seems a pie in the sky. The reason being it hardly takes anything to exploit any law for personal gains in this communal based political system. In such a scenario, organisations like ADR and NEW will have to turn every stone for creating a better political spectrum.