The presence of criminalisation of politics was felt in its strongest form during the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, said in a 100-page judgment on Tuesday.
The blasts, the court said, was “the result of a collaboration of a diffused network of criminal gangs, police and customs officials and their political patrons… the tremors of the attacks shook the entire nation.”
Vohra panel report
The court referred to how the N.N. Vohra Committee, which was set up following a public outcry after the blasts, submitted its report in October 1993 after its study of the problem of criminalisation of politics and the nexus among criminals, politicians and bureaucrats in India.
The committee had concluded that agencies, including the CBI, IB, RAW, had unanimously expressed their opinion that the criminal network was virtually running a parallel government.
The committee report mentioned how money power was first acquired through real estate and then used for building up contacts with bureaucrats and politicians. “The money power is used to develop a network of muscle power which is also used by the politicians during elections,” Chief Justice Misra quoted from the report.
The judgment also refers to the fact that voices within Parliament also felt the need to end the bane of criminal politics. The 18th Report presented by a parliamentary committee to the Rajya Sabha in March 2007 expressed a strong “feeling that politics should be cleansed of persons with established criminal background”. It said “criminalisation of politics is the bane of society and negation of democracy”.
The Law Commission of India, in its 244th report, succinctly put it that “instead of politicians having suspected links to criminal networks, as was the case earlier, it was persons with extensive criminal backgrounds who began entering politics.”
The Law Commission said that in the 10 years since 2004, 18% of the candidates contesting either national or State elections had criminal cases against them (11,063 out of 62,847).
The Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms, as early as in 1990, highlighted the crippling effect of money and muscle power in elections.
