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Rani Singh:
If you think that what is currently going on in British politics is sleazy it would appear that Indian MPs and parliamentary candidates are allegedly not always hindered by such high principles.
I’m not casting aspersions upon those who run the largest democracy in the world… it's just that one in five members of India's last parliament had criminal cases filed against them while in office.
The Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), analysing the affidavits of 7,405 candidates contesting in 2009, have found that 1,114 face criminal charges.
These counts are not for piddly parking fines, they’re serious; murder, kidnapping and extortion.
Where more than three candidates in the fray have criminal records, the states are described as ‘Red Alert’ constituencies. There are 188 ‘Red Alert’ constituencies in India in the 2009 election cycle.
The Times of India reports that The BSP (led by ‘untouchable’ heroine Mayawati), part of the so-called ‘Third Front’ likely to play a prominent part in any new coalition, equals the dominant Congress party in its numbers of ‘heinous’ crime charges such as ‘murder, attempt to murder, extortion etc.’
In the candidate criminal record chart, 499 have charges related to ‘heinous’ crimes - Congress and the BSP have 43 candidates each, closely followed by the BJP with 41.
In the state of Bihar, Eastern India, 25 per cent of the candidates have had 'close encounters' with the law. The parliamentary front-runner here is facing criminal charges including three counts of murder.
He is awaiting trial for the alleged killing of the head of a rival family.
At public meetings, he describes himself as a ‘baahubali,’ literally translating from hindi as ‘strongman’ but more commonly used to mean ‘gangster.’
They’re so laid back, these Indian politicians.
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Sacred Election: Lessons from the Biggest Democracy in the World
... Political anthropologist Dr Mukulika Banerjee reports from India on the many surprising ways in which the country manages to defy apparently insuperable odds to deliver an efficient and effective democratic process.
An Indian general election is the largest single organised event in the world, with over 700 million voters, 800,000 polling stations and one million electronic voting machines moved in phases around the country; and, unlike many western democracies, electoral participation in India is positively buoyant, and rising. ...
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