To Bring in Morality in Politics through Laws is not the Solution

Implementation of laws across the world see breaches more than adherence to them. The new constitutional amendment bill providing for dismissal of prime minister, chief ministers and ministers if they stay in jail for 30 days in cases where five years' imprisonment or above is provided against the jurisprudential principle of presumption of innocence unless proved guilty.

We have thousands of examples where prosecution's cases have failed miserably in the trial.  The fresh examples are acquittals in the Malegaon bomb blast case.

The years of incarceration the accused in such cases suffer have no remedies in law. Police in the country are not above suspicion. They quite often work in tandem with the party in power.

Besides, there is already a law for disqualification of MPs or MLAs in cases where the sentence provided is two years and above. This covers chief ministers, prime minister and ministers as well.

Lalu Prasad was declared unfit to fight election following his conviction and disqualification following. Its disqualification come into effect immediately.

Similarly, then Tamil Nadu chief minister the late Jayalalithaa had to resign after her conviction in a disproportionate case. So, there is no need to enact a new law to 'restore morality' in politics.

Further, the process for making politics ethical must begin with the political parties giving no quarters to persons with criminal background and have cases pending against them at the end of investigation or trial stage while selecting candidates for polls.

As per Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), 46% of newly elected MPs in 2024 have criminal charges pending against them, a jump of 16% from 30% in 2019 Lok Sabha poll. About 5,000 criminal cases are pending against MPs and MLAs in courts across the country.

What is needed to clean politics is not a new law but filtering down criminals while deciding to nominate candidates to fight elections by the political parties.

But their priority is different: to select candidates keeping in mind their winnability, not their clean or unclean backgrounds. Instead of enacting another law, the political parties must first put their house in order if they are interested in bringing in morality in politics the real sense.