The election in India is colossal with 814 million people casting their votes to select the new government. Electorate in the country is largest in the world and determined to usher in a new political party, which will bring about change in country’s economic and social scenario. However, nothing is good on the political front; many of the candidates contesting the election have criminal charges against them and raise many questions that need an answer.
Politicians with criminal records
It is not just one party which has criminals in its ranks but it is problem with all the parties with forty one percent of BJP MPs have criminal charges against them, twenty four percent in case of Congress and overall one-third of members of parliament are facing criminal proceedings ranging from rape, electoral misconduct to murder.
Candidates in this Lok Sabha Election
The situation has not changed a bit in this present Lok Sabha election also and recent publication states that about fifth of all candidates have criminal charges against them, the study is yet to complete. Political parties seem least interested in these facts since these candidates succeed in elections.
Who succeeds in elections
According to statistics, politicians with clean image have seven percent chance of success whereas those with charges of minor crimes have nineteen percent and candidates with major crime charges have twenty-five percent chance of succeeding in votes. Some reasons for their success are that they bring with them illicit funds that are used during campaigns to purchase votes.
False allegations against politicians
One of the problems is that many abuse the legal system to bring in false allegations against politicians. Due to this reason, common people ignore even some of the actual allegations as false implication against the politicians. Sometimes voters also pay more importance to candidate’s caste or class instead of his or her criminal records at the time of voting which is a reason that these candidates succeed in elections despite such criminal charges against them.
To conclude we will say that India has to develop a consensus on who should be allowed to take part in election. One option is to see whether the person has been indicted by the court of law, which will mean court also feels there is a case against the person and those persons not allowed contesting the elections.
