CHENNAI, FEB 7: Deputy Chairperson of Rajya Sabha Najma Heptullah today said politicians facing grave criminal and corruption charges should not be allowed to contest in the elections.Subscribing to chief election commissioner M S Gill's suggestion that candidates charge-sheeted by a Court should be debarred from participating in elections, the Deputy Chairman, however, said ``the charges should not be frivolous like staging political demonstrations. It should be criminal or corruption cases''.Addressing mediapersons in Chennai, she said ``The system has to be made clean''. The Deputy Chairperson also disclosed that she had written to the Election Commissioner urging him to make the elections to the Upper House ``open and transparent''. In the wake of charges that ``big money was exchanged to get elected to the Upper House'' and that the MLAs and MPs had taken bribes during the last by-election to the Rajya Sabha, she asked the Election Commission to work out a system which would ensure transparency inelections to the Rajya Sabha.On the Tamil Maanila Congress' offer of co-ordination to the Congress, Heptullah said the party would welcome TMC's support. However, only Congress leader Sonia Gandhi would decide whether the TMC should merge with the party or extend co-operation and co-ordination to the Congress, she clarified in response to another query. On the mood in the Congress top-brass on forming an alternative Government, she merely said the Congress wanted all secular forces to come together.On the All India Christian Forums' demand for ouster of Orissa Chief Minister J B Patnaik in the wake of the attacks on missionaries, Najma said if that was the case the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers of all the States which had witnessed attacks on missionaries should also be dismissed. Lashing out at the BJP Government for the series of attacks on Christians in the country, she said the perpetrators of these crimes were only destroying Hindu and Indian ethos. She said the PM's call for a debate onconversions was quite unnecessary and was only an attempt to divert people's attention. ``The debate should be on how to protect the lives of people instead of on conversions.''
