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Independent panel identifies 72 candidates with criminal background

A panel of eminent personalities on Thursday released a list of 72 poll candidates with alleged criminal backgrounds, a majority of them from Uttar Pradesh.

The panel, consisting of former Supreme Court judge Kuldeep Singh, former home secretary Madhav Godbole, former Union minister C Subramaniam, social activist Swami Agnivesh and Common Cause director H D Shourie, said these candidates were unfit for contesting elections.

The panel, which investigated the backgrounds of 500 of the 4,693 candidates in the fray for the 12th Lok Sabha election, found that 72 of them had criminal proceedings pending against them. Of these, 16 belonged to the Bharatiya Janata Party, 12 to the Samajwadi Party, nine to the Congress, five each to the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and one to the Janata Dal.

Of the national parties, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India-Marxist did not figure in the list compiled by Outlook magazine on the basis of six criteria drawn up by the panel.

Outlook editor Vinod Mehta said his team encountered enormous resistance from the state machinery while gathering information on the backgrounds of the candidates. While political parties were reluctant to part with their candidates's lists, court and police officials often gave misleading information, he said. Much of the information was sent in by concerned citizens, he added.

Uttar Pradesh had the largest number, 30, of the candidates in the list, with Bihar figuring second with 22.

Madhya Pradesh had seven such candidates, Karnataka four, Haryana and Tamil Nadu two each, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat and Maharashtra one each.

Delhi, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab were among the states which did not figure in the list.

The other political parties which figured in the list were Shiv Sena (two), AIADMK (one), Samata Party (two), CPI-ML (one), JMM (three), Haryana Lok Dal (one), Haryana Vikas Party (one), Karnataka Vikas Party (one), Bihar Jan Congress (two) and Jantantrik BSP (one). The remaining were independents.

Justice Kuldeep Singh said these names would be forwarded to the Election Commission with the request that it look into the matter.

He said the large number of candidates with criminal background in politics had made it necessary to have a stringent law barring such people from contesting elections.

Mehta said Outlook launched this initiative as it found that political parties were paying only lip service to the need for clean politics while fielding several such people in the elections.

"Politics is about public image. Those with tainted backgrounds should wait to be cleared by courts before being allowed to contest elections," Swami Agnivesh said.

The panellists also said the great difficulty encountered by the Outlook team in investigating the candidates's history had highlighted the need for a Right to Information bill. In the meanwhile, the Election Commission should issue a directive making it obligatory for government officials to disclose to the public information about poll contestants, Godbole said.

The six criteria drawn up by the panellists to identify criminal candidates were: