THE Election Commission of India has asked that names of all those against whom non-bailable warrants (NBWs) are pending for over six months be deleted from voters’ lists. The Commission argues that since voters are expected to ordinarily reside at their given addresses, ‘absconders’ are obvious candidates for deletion. This, the EC would have us believe, would put an effective brake on criminalisation of electoral politics. Ironically, a delegation of RJD MPs that met the EC to oppose this order included the infamous criminal MP from Siwan, Md. Shahabuddin, who has got as many as six NBWs pending against him. The EC must be aware as to why these six NBWs have not been executed so far. Shahabuddin continues to be protected and patronized by the state administration of Bihar, even under President’s Rule. In fact, the state’s response to the recent NBWs has been to transfer the young, courageous SP of Bihar who had found fresh incriminating evidence against the notorious MP!
This takes us to the real crux of the problem - criminalisation of state-power or governance. The malady is much more acute than the much talked about issue of criminalisation of politics or entry of criminals into state legislatures or Parliament. The latter aspect - direct entry of Shahabuddins into Assemblies and Parliament - has only added a new stunning visibility or transparency to the phenomenon and exposed the utter hollowness and hypocrisy of the bourgeois pretension of rule of law. Instead of addressing the crux of the problem, the EC has come out with a ‘cure’ that will only aggravate the malady by curbing the democratic rights of the people who are resisting criminalisation on the ground.
More than a decade ago the Union Government had appointed a committee headed by the then Home Secretary NN Vohra to go into the question of operation of crime syndicates in the country. The Committee came up with a damning indictment of a growing criminal-politician-bureaucrat-police nexus. The report has since been gathering dust and no serious effort has been made to challenge, let alone dismantle, this nexus and streamline the judicial process to ensure prompt prosecution and conviction of criminals. Anybody familiar with the criminal prosecution and justice delivery system in the country knows how difficult it is to file FIRs against big criminals and how rarely do such FIRs lead to issue and execution of arrest warrants. The rate of actual conviction of the big bosses of the crime world is most negligible.
By contrast, people fighting against feudal oppression, economic loot and criminalisation are easily implicated and convicted. False cases and NBWs against political activists working among and for the rural poor are a routine feature in states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. Almost all political agitations lead to FIRs that involve hundreds of unknown and unnamed people and agricultural labour and poor peasant activists are often subsequently framed and even convicted in such cases as and when the ‘need’ or ‘opportunity’ arises. The EC’s order depriving people with NBWs of the right to vote or contest elections is thus heavily tilted against the fighting rural poor and forces of radical transformation while state-protected criminals would continue to call the shots. It may be argued that the people with NBWs may still contest the polls from within jails. But one can easily imagine the difficulty movement activists would face in restoring names that have already been deleted. Moreover, some legal brains in the country have already called for debarring prisoners from contesting elections. They argue that it is anomalous to allow prisoners to contest because after all they are not allowed to cast their votes.
If criminalisation has become so rampant in a state like Bihar, it must be understood that it is no longer an aberration but a characteristic feature of governance in Bihar. Criminals play a purposeful ‘social role’ in the decadent semi-feudal and unproductive milieu of Bihar - they help maintain the status quo by suppressing and terrorising the rural poor and they help accumulate wealth without any production-related hassle! The real battle against criminalisation is therefore a battle against this decadent social order and it can only be won through a more organized and vigorous participation of the masses of people in the political process. The EC’s order would actually hinder this process of people’s participation and real democratization of the electoral process.
By ordering deletion of names of people with NBWs from voters’ lists, the EC has opened one more avenue for manipulating electoral rolls, and provided the powers that be with one more ‘legal’ incentive to harass and disenfranchise the rural poor. The EC must not stop the people in the name of containing criminals. The EC’s approach is akin to the TADA-POTA policy of curtailing civil liberties and democratic rights in the name of taming terrorism. Like TADA and POTA, this order is also liable to result in large-scale denial and distortion of democracy. In the name of deterring criminals, the EC must not disenfranchise citizens.q