Asatya Mewae Jayatae

No, I have not lost my head in making this grave charge. Criminalisation has been encouraged by the top leaders of all the national parties by unscrupulously throwing overboard the most basic qualification required for the membership of the Rajya Sabha which, remember, is the Council of States. It is neither India’s House of Lords nor the House of Elders, as many members fancifully describe it. The House was designed to represent the states in keeping with the federal principle and, according to Nehru, required to function in its "allotted sp-here". It is, therefore, indirectly chosen by the various State Assemblies constituting the Union of India.

Any Indian citizen, duly registered as a voter, can stand for the Lok Sabha from any part of the country since the House of People like the House of Commons, represents the nation. (This enabled me, a voter in New Delhi, to be elected twice to the House from Darjeeling.) But the same does not hold good in regard to the Rajya Sabha. The founding fathers of our Constitution were clear that only persons who were "ordinarily resident" of a state should be qualified to become members of the Rajya Sabha and thereby enable the House to play its role as the Council of States well and truly.

Yet, the lure of the Council of States continues to play havoc all round. More and more among the moneyed and influential people prefer to become members of the Rajya Sabha with an assured term of six years than of the Lok Sabha. (Fools, it is said, fight elections to the Lok Sabha. But wise men manipulate their way into the Rajya Sabha!) This is achieved by securing a party ticket somehow and then meeting the basic requirement of ordinary residence in a given state by brazenly filing false affidavits, a crime both under the Indian Penal Code and Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act 1950.

Matters have degenerated to a point where even top advocates of the Sup-reme Court ordinarily resident in New Delhi have filed false affidavits for getting elected from one state or the other, howsoever abominably. One such well-known advocate, for instance, claimed some years back that he was ordinarily a resident of Patna and got himself elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar on a Congress ticket with the blessings of Laloo Yadav. Likewise, four well-known senior advocates, residents of Delhi for long, have got themselves elected to the House (two on BJP tickets, one on Congress and one on Jharkhand Mukti Morcha) from UP, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, which provokes me to ask: Should all such advocates be allowed to go scot free? Should their black gowns not be taken away suo motu and they be barred from practising on the ground of brazen perjury.

No less shocking are the many cases of intellectuals, academicians and journalists who, like the advocates, have no business whatsoever to tell lies and willfully file false affidavits. In an outrageous case, an erstwhile Congress minister, known by everyone to be ordinarily resident of New Delhi, also got himself elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar on a Janata Dal ticket in 1992 after absurdly claiming that he was ordinarily a resident of Patna! Although guilty of perjury under the IPC and much else, he went on to become India’s Foreign Minister and, subsequently, Prime Minister.

We have no doubt the celebrated case of Dr Manmohan Singh, who got elected to the Rajya Sabha from Assam by claiming to be an ordinary resident of Guwahati. (Ordinary resident, according to the Representation of the People Act, means a habitual resident of the place. This residence must be permanent in character and not temporary or casual.) His claim was contested in the Guwahati High Court. But the case was dismissed on the ground that the Electoral Registration Officer had no choice but to accept Dr Singh’s claim since it was made as a person holding a declared office Union Minister. Luck favoured him again when the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal against the High Court order on December 1 last. Nevertheless, the basic issue of ordinary residence and false affidavits remains.

All I have said may appear to some as being old hat, unworthy of their time and attention. But we need to face the harsh truth that the leaders of all the national parties are today guilty of encouraging criminalisation of politics by knowingly asking their favourites to file affidavits which are wantonly false and are seen by our people to be so. They have no business to denounce Pappu Yadav and his likes or the history-sheeters in the UP Assembly when their own hands are soaked in crime as co-conspirators. Merely because "everyone is doing it" is no justification. Will we accept rape and robbery on that ground?

Ultimately, we need to answer one basic question: What kind of an India do we want? True, we need to get good and able people into our Parliament. But this must be done in an honourable way, as shown by Nehru. At the same time, our top leaders should admit their great folly in having encouraged crime and ensure by common consent that there is no place in the Rajya Sabha for any member who has recently or earlier filed a false affidavit about his ordinary residence to get elected. We must uphold the rule of law scrupulously if we are to restore our people’s faith in parliamentary democracy and save the system from rack and ruin. No nation can be built on lies. The choice before us is clear: Satya Mewae Jayatae or Asatya Mewae Jayatae.

The writer is editor, INFA