Lalu gets five years in jail.
By Rajiv Theodore
NEW DELHI: It is the first step to clean out the dirt and India began with its political class which had been for decades mired in controversies ranging from embezzlements to rape and murder. This class had overtaken all aspects of life in the country so much so that the road to wealth and power became synonymous with pure–play politics. This also meant that scores of murders, rapes and embezzling of public money has been linked to politicians over the years in India where scams are unearthed back to back and each one is bigger than the last.
It’s a small baby step to create a semblance of order amongst politicians of all hues with the government finally trashing an ordinance that seeks to protect convicted politicians for carrying on their membership in the Parliament or state legislature.
A bill pending in Parliament seeking to amend some sections of the Representation of the People Act that could also have helped tainted politicians to carry on their business as usual will also be withdrawn. Both the ordinance and the bill had sought to undo a July 10 Supreme Court verdict that elected representatives should give up their membership of Parliament or state assemblies immediately if convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment of more than two years.
The Union Cabinet, in an emergency meeting, which huddled together a day after the return of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from his US visit, decided unanimously to withdraw the ordinance that it had approved on September 24th. Three days earlier, this ordinance was publicly rubbished by Congress Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
Political pundits says that the reversal of the decision on ordinance proved that the 43-year-old scion of the Gandhi family is effectively taking control of the 128-year-old party, which had found itself in an unusual public tussle with a government it heads after he made public his opinion that the ordinance should be “torn up and thrown away”.
Prime Minister Singh met Gandhi, who explained his reservations over the government’s move. Gandhi pointed out to Singh that the government did not take into account the views of party workers and public sentiment on protecting convicted lawmakers when it cleared the ordinance. Top leaders of the Congress also met and endorsed Gandhi’s views, agreeing that at a time when the party and the government are facing a drop in popularity because of corruption scandals and other controversies, such an ordinance had the potential to do more damage to its image.
The issue had briefly divided the Congress, with the younger lot of politicians in the party publicly backing Gandhi, while some senior ministers and allies of the party supported the ordinance. The opposition criticized the party vice-president for raising his objections publicly when the Prime Minister was away on a visit to the US, saying it had undermined the nation’s highest executive office. The incident had triggered off a huge furor that whipped up sentiments in the political circles and there were even strong rumors that the embattled Prime Minister would step down from his office.
In a related development Thursday, former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav has been finally sent to jail for five years after a special court found him guilty of graft in a multi-million rupee fodder scam. He also becomes automatically disqualified from being the member of the Lok Sabha in the Parliament and would be effectively out of the electoral arena for 11 years which has spelled doom for his Rashtriya Janata (RJD), a party he founded in 1997. The Supreme Court has also ruled that a legislator will remain disqualified for a further six years from the date of release unless a higher court overturns both the conviction and sentencing.
On the whole the move to withdraw the ordinance augurs well for India but again it is a small step and the Augean’s stables loom large in a country where its people have increasingly become exasperated facing graft and corruption on a daily basis.