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COVER STORY: JAYALALITHA
Can Polity Be Convict-Free?
When we are planning for posterity, we ought
to remember that virtue is not hereditary
--Thomas Paine
In the debates of
the Constituent Assembly, the framers of India's Basic Law discussed the
possibility of a criminal taking political office. The idea was dismissed
forthwith and no watertight method of keeping the polity crime-free was
attempted.
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Even
as the AIAIDMK camp celebrates it is time to plug the constitutional
lacunae.
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This has often led to piquant situations. As
early as 1965, wrote Granville Austin in Working a Democratic Constitution:
The Indian Experience, "Some 700 'Left communists' were detained
in Kerala to prevent a suspected uprising-28 of whom subsequently were
elected to the legislative assembly in 1965 while detained." Were
they "criminals"? In somebody's reckoning they were.
It is easier to reach a conclusion in contemporary
Uttar Pradesh, where 166 of 403 MLAs and 19 of 100-odd ministers face
criminal cases. While it has been suggested that even those who face criminal
chargesheets be debarred from contesting elections, that may be too strong
a measure. A chargesheet, after all, is no guarantor of conviction. Nor
will such a measure prevent a Jayalalitha-type recurrence.
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OPINION
Cho Ramaswamy, Tamil Nadu
journalist and Rajya Sabha MP
Going
by the Constitution's grey areas Going by the Constitution and law,
as they stand, there is no bar on Jayalalitha being the chief minister.
But her case points to an urgent need for either a constitutional
amendment or a judicial verdict breaking the "constitutional silence"
on the issue. With the AIADMK garnering a majority and electing
Jayalalitha the legislature party leader, the governor had no option
but to administer her the oath of office. This does not mean that
people's verdict can overturn a judicial verdict. I had taken a
stand that if the AIADMK won the elections, Jayalalitha should set
a good precedent by not staking claim for chief ministership, but
now politicians like Laloo Yadav can stake a similar claim. The
silence of the Constitution on such an issue has come into focus.
A judicial verdict could help provide a clear directive, disallowing
a convicted person from holding the high office.
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There is a glaring lacuna in a system where the
RPA and the EC guidelines prevent a convict from contesting an election
but the Constitution permits the governor to appoint him or her as chief
minister. An amendment of the Constitution, taking care of its departures
from the RPA provisions and injecting objective criteria for the governor
to adhere to, may help. It should certainly keep the Constitutional Review
Committee gainfully occupied.
In Kerala, R. Balakrishna Pillai of the Kerala
Congress (B), a ruling UDF constituent, has just been re-elected MLA.
He too has been convicted in a corruption case but his nomination papers
were accepted because he was a sitting legislator and this facility is
allowed in such cases.
Governor S.S. Kang "suggested" to
new Chief Minister A.K. Antony that Pillai be kept out of the ministry.
Antony agreed, made Pillai see reason and inducted his son instead. Pillai
could have insisted but didn't and saved the polity its dignity. The quality
of democracy, after all, is never independent of those who run it. As
Jayalalitha begins what she promises will be a taint-free reign, that
is a sobering thought.
--With Vaasanthi, Lakshmi Iyer and Subhash
Mishra
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