Wheels of justice

The judgement, sentencing him to 25 months’ rigorous imprisonment, represents a double victory for the cause of probity in democratic polity. Muthiah has made history of a dubious sort by becoming the first presiding officer of a legislative chamber in free India to earn such a conviction. Whether he will be barred from contesting elections on the ground of his sentence of over two years is a question of limited political interest.

Far more important is the fact that attempts to deny public accountability of those occupying constitutional office have ended in a resounding failure in this instance. More important than the conviction itself, which is in any case to be challenged in the Madras High Court, were the earlier judicial rejections of a special immunity plea.

Muthiah was, of course, never a Speaker of the kind who commanded the respect due to his constitutional office. He could not have been one, with his public and puerile displays of servile personal loyalty to the leader of the ruling party in the House he presided over. Prostrating himself in public at her feet, literally, he only lowered the dignity of his post and the legislature itself. Nothing became a former Speaker less, however, than his repeated plea against a trial on corruption charges on the ground that his had not been the post of a "public servant". The same specious and shameless argument had been advanced before against chargesheeting, investigation and prosecution of members of Parliament. Politicians who become the presiding officers of legislative chambers cannot, on that count, be placed outside the purview of ordinary law.

The claim that a Speaker’s quasi-judicial status gives him the same immunity as enjoyed by a member of the judiciary does not stand scrutiny.

Muthiah’s conviction is not final, and there is no predicting the fate of his proposed appeal to the high court. Unpredictable, too, is the way "the law will take its own course" in the cases of other AIADMK leaders convicted by special courts before. Experience does not encourage the hopes of those who would like to see the abuse of political office for pecuniary gain punished. Apprehensions that cases of this category are not built to last, that they are not pursued to their logical conclusion, need to be allayed. It is to be seen if the Tamil Nadu agencies do better in this regard than their counterparts at the Centre and in other states.