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The PM cannot shun criminals because his survival depends on them

Criminals, the chief election commissioner says, should be barred from participating in elections. According to his count, there are, in the present Parliament, at least 10 members with criminal records. Such persons, he does not have the least doubt in his mind, should be expeditiously expelled from Parliament through passage of special legislation. The prime minister has followed suit; criminals, he too thinks, have no place in our august Parliament.

As things now stand, is not the prime minister merely reiterating some sanctimonious nonsense? The chances are more than fifty-fifty, were he to bring forward an amendment to the Representation of the People's Act to ratify the chief election commissioner's suggestion, that he would find himself played into an impossible corner: Globalisation has liberated not just policies, but notions and concepts as well. One can therefore never be sure whether Parliament knows any longer how to define criminal conduct that would bar individuals guilty of such conduct from aspiring to be representatives of the people.

Consider, for instance, the argument articulated before the judiciary by one of the present prime minister's predecessors. This former prime minister has been accused of offering bribes to some members of the Lok Sabha to persuade them to support him in the vote over the no-confidence resolution moved against his government in July 1993. The matter is sub judice and we have to wait with bated breath for the judge's verdict on the weightiness of the plea.

The concurrent issue of what till the other day was described as public morality can hardly be avoided though. An individual, who headed the nation's administration continuously for five years and happened to be the leader of the nation's principal party, does not mind suggesting that, since Parliament is a sovereign body, acts and activities indulged inside it by its members are beyond the jurisdiction of the country's judiciary; that is to say, members of Parliament and ministers and even the prime minister may be guilty of committing within the precincts of Parliament the luridest of misbehaviour, get involved in venality of the worst sort including murder, bribe-giving and bribe-receiving; they would still remain outside the pale of law, To wit, MPs, according to this view, are above the law.

Whether such an assertion will receive the imprimatur of approval from the judiciary is to be seen. But the moral aspect of the matter will keep nagging at us. It is as if a new philosophy of life and living is being adumbrated; ministers and MPs are a breed apart; ordinary citizens may be hauled up in court for conduct generally regarded as criminal, ruling politicians however should escape prosecution despite committing an identical offence because Parliament is sovereign.

The former prime minister does not respond to the allegation that he had arranged to bribe a number of MPs on the eve of the no-confidence resolution. He is cocky enough to argue that, never mind whether he had bribed some MPs or not, it is none of the judiciary's business to probe into the matter; even if he had indulged in acts of bribery, he cannot be treated like an ordinary criminal.

Politicians of this genre have sunk to the lowest depths, and the former prime minister's stance is first hand evidence of the state of their degeneration. There is however no explosion of public outrage at what his counsel has said. None from the former prime minister's party has bothered to issued statements disapproving the contents of the legal brief submitted by their erstwhile leader. The present prime minister too, despite his seeming anxiety to restore decency and morality in public life, has not come out with a sizzling statement condemning the argument mounted by the former prime minister's counsel.

The scenario could easily have been different. The present prime minister could have said: this is the pits, an averment of the kind the former prime minister has made his an affront to all notions of democracy and decency. He could have been scrupulously fair, and first enquired of the former prime minister whether he endorsed the plea mounted by his counsel. In case the response happened to be in the affirmative, he could have given a stentorian call to the nation to treat this former prime minister as a social outcast.

The prime minister has not taken any of these steps. He and the former prime minister concerned actually continue to meet on formal as well as social occasions. The present prime minister does not for a moment consider it necessary and important to cut dead the former prime minister. In fact, every time they meet, they exchange the usual pleasantries, as if everything is all right with this best of possible countries.

The present prime minister cannot be unaware of the lurking danger of his joining the ranks of professional hypocrites. If he is for the eradication of corruption and criminality from public life, he must begin by shunning the company of certain groups and people who are widely suspected of criminal misconduct and against some of whom criminal prosecution is already on. He can also barely run away from endorsing the proposition that, irrespective of the social and political eminence of certain households, should the needle of suspicion in some notorious corruption cases point toward their direction, the prime minister has a burden of responsibility to keep his distance from such households.

The prime minister, alas, is more likely to confess to his state of helplessness. He cannot shun the company of criminals and potential criminals, because these days these elements constitute the overwhelmingly more powerful political forces in society. He cannot even dare to refuse to attend meetings and congregations organised by entities with extensive criminal connection. He has to survive as prime minister. He can do so only on the parliamentary support of political parties, including parties shot full of corruption. Till as long as this situation persists, his emotion-laden invectives against the venal set can be expected to be greeted with cynicism and derision. And comments may well begin to proliferate: he is no different from the criminal lot, for he depends for his survival on its support.

Let us cross over to a relatively straightforward issue. Several eminent political leaders, including the prime minister, have got themselves elected to the Rajya Sabha on the basis of patently false claims. The Representation of the People's Act ordains those elected to the Rajya Sabha from a particular state must be ordinarily resident in that state. One can quote at least two dozen examples where the provisions of the act have been ignored with flourish. The prime minister himself has stretched the truth when he swore on a legal document to the effect that he was ordinarily resident in Patna. He was not, and is not; he, everybody knows, is ordinarily resident in Delhi. His human resources development minister is not a resident of Cuttack or Bhubaneswar whether, but of Bangalore. Several luminaries of MPs belonging to other non-Left political parties are guilty of the same prevarication.

Integrity is one major aspect of non-criminal behaviour. None of the politicians who got themselves elected to the Rajya Sabha from states where they are not ordinarily resident, can pretend to pass the test of integrity. Such being the case, the nation will be compelled to take a cynical view of the prime minister's sorrow at the lack of integrity in politics. Should he not show the way? He is in no position to sacrifice his parliamentary seat; he can yet bring forward a simple resolution which will scrap the stipulation in the Representation of the People's Act on 'ordinary' residency, thereby divesting himself and several of his colleagues of the stigma of lack of integrity.

To enact such a legislation will be against the spirit of the Constitution. Should not politicians have the honesty even in this very late hour to admit that, through all these decades, they care not one bit about sustaining the spirit of the Constitution? They allowed Assam to be represented in the Rajya Sabha by eminences from Punjab or Bihar. The consequences which followed constitute a large part of our current tribulations.

Finally, let the unpleasant point be made. The prime minister must begin at the beginning. He must stop attending anniversary ceremonies honouring X,Y or Z who, whatever his or her other qualities, had -- the evidence strongly suggests -- dipped the hand in the public till.