Indian Express
26-04-2007

By Santwana Bhattacharya

NEW DELHI, APRIL 25:  The involvement of Babubhai Katara and four other MPs in human trafficking has turned the focus back on the fact that the 14th Lok Sabha has the largest ever number of lawmakers with criminal records.

Apart from a handful of MPs from states like Assam, Himachal Pradesh, J-K and Uttaranchal, who have no criminal charges against them, every other state has a few parliamentarians with criminal cases against them. This includes minor offences and even major crimes like murder, rape and dacoity.

Data prepared by the India chapter of Social Watch-which has former and sitting MPs Nilotpal Basu, Madhusudan Mistry, Pyari Mohan Mahapatra and Sandeep Dixit on its committee- shows that 125 of the 538 MPs have criminal cases pending against them.

While 62 of these MPs have been named in minor cases, mostly of a political nature, the rest have been booked for serious crimes that could lead to jail terms of five years or above.

Recently, a parliamentary committee had rejected the Election Commission's proposal to ban persons accused of serious criminal offenses and where the court is prime facie convinced about their involvement in the crime from contesting elections till they are cleared of such charges.

The Social Watch data, tabulated from affidavits submitted by MPs to the EC and later to Parliament, also shows that all major political parties have members with criminal antecedents.

A detailed study on criminalisation and related aspects of the 14th Lok Sabha by the Public Affairs Centre, Bangalore, confirms that a quarter of the MPs have a criminal background. Among them, half of those with serious criminal cases against them were from UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and MP. Parliamentarians from Andhra Pradesh have the least number of criminal cases against them, just 7.2 per cent.