Today the Hon. CJI made headline for a very different reason. He shared his emotions, which may be anger, helplessness or even frustration on the poor condition of Indian Judicial System with crores of pending cases and drought like scarcity of judges and related infrastructure. Where cases per judge are in thousands and time period for cases goes is not in just months or years but decades.
The data on pendency is available on National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) and some perspective on Criminalisation of politics can be found in this article in The Hindu.
Data suggests that a criminal has more chances of winning an election than a clean candidate. And a party is also more likely to field a crorepati criminal rather than a clean candidate. Only in reserved category (SC/ST) seats, candidates with clean background (and also non-crorepati's) have more chances of winning. In 16th Lok Sabha we have 34% MPs facing criminal charges, up from 24 and 30 in 2004 and 2009 respectively. The trend is clearly visible. In some states, 40-50% MLAs are facing criminal charges. Law commission's 244th report on electoral disqualification deals with this issue in length and propose many suitable reforms.
What is interesting is that the action of Civil Society (eg. PUCL) and Supreme Court's laudable decisions in PILs that have done a lot positive in the direction of reducing criminalisation of politics. Be it mandatory disclosure of pending cases and income , or declaring section 8(4) of RPA unconstitutional, that allowed convicted members to appeal, such initiative have shown hope. But we still have made very little progress. May be that's why the present political system is so keen to reform judiciary rather than implementing the already suggested (and many accepted) reforms by various commissions and committees.
Amidst all this, it's perplexing that while we seem to be a very keen country on reforms,we keep talking about doing business index, investor friendly environment and a clean bharat and so on, three basic reforms in our democratic system, that are 1) reforms in Criminal Justice System, 2) Police reforms and 3) Electoral reforms are pending for so long! (And let's not even talk about Health and Education and save that for some other day.) Should we really be surprised at all. Isn't it so clear! It's the beneficiary of the present system who are the biggest hurdle in the way of any reform or progress. Why criminal-politician-rich-corrupt nexus would want to have these reforms and would make it difficult for themselves to keep a hold on power. How can we expect a legislator who himself or herself is facing criminal charges to make laws for an efficient police and an effective criminal justice system. What is more devastating is that even the people has given up hope and the data on winnability of criminals indicates nothing but that. May be people think that unless the real power is being wielded by the criminals, there is no point in wasting their vote in electing a few clean people. Moreover, when the majority is criminal and corrupt , what would a few be able to do. If this mindset has crept in, it is really a sad thing and should not be allowed to happen. Unless we have democracy in the political parties, we can not have real democracy.
The sad thing is that , all these things are known, well discussed and understood and yet are unable to pass through the systematic inertia. These are not even election issues. The governments have been successfully diverting attention from governance deficit to mundane emotional issues. Events like IPL water wastage instead of failure in managing water, and sloganism instead of substantial issues have got more public attention. People are more emotional than rational. May be that is why our CJI made an emotional appeal as nothing else have worked yet. I think it is the time to go beyond merely saying "Justice delayed is.... justice denied". We have to ask for it, as if it is a matter of life and death! (wait a minute, isn't it already).
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