Context:

• A February 2020 Supreme Court judgment on criminalisation in politics may have far-reaching consequences for Indian democracy which will first be implemented in the coming Bihar elections in October 2020. 

Significance:

• The political party and its leadership would for the first time have to publicly own up to criminalisation of politics which they had been denying all these years.

About February 2020 SC judgement

• The judgement ordered political parties to publish the entire criminal history of their candidates for Assembly and Lok Sabha elections along with the reasons that goaded them to field suspected criminals over decent people.
• The information should be published in a local as well as a national newspaper as well as the parties’ social media handles.
• It should mandatorily be published either within 48 hours of the selection of candidates or less than two weeks before the first date for filing of nominations, whichever is earlier.
• The published information on the criminal antecedents of a candidate should be detailed and include the nature of their offences, charges framed against him, the court concerned, case number, etc.
• A political party should explain to the public through their published material how the “qualifications or achievements or merit” of a candidate, charged with a crime, impressed it enough to cast aside the smear of his criminal background.
• A party would have to give reasons to the voter that it was not the candidate’s “mere winnability at the polls” which guided its decision to give him ticket to contest elections.
•  If a political party fails to comply, it would be  in contempt of the Court’s orders/directions.

Why did the Court pass such an order? 

• The judgment notes that “In 2004, 24% of the Members of Parliament had criminal cases pending against them; in 2009, that went up to 30%; in 2014 to 34%; and in 2019 as many as 43% of MPs had criminal cases pending against them.”

Issues associated with the judgement

1. Several laws and court judgments have not helped much due to lack of enforcement of laws and judgments. 
2. It is also not clear what penalty would be imposed if the recent orders are not followed.

Way forward:

• Monitoring the affidavits of candidates, working with the Election Commission to ensure that information is promptly available on their websites, and widely circulating this information to voters using all the social media tools available is necessary.
•  It also includes monitoring compliance with the Supreme Court judgment to see if details of tainted candidates are promptly put up on their websites, and on their social media handles, along with proper reasons for giving them tickets.
• Voters also need to be vigilant about misuse of money, gifts and other inducements during elections.