No Criminals !!!

Folks… This time I am going to give you all an interesting statistical report. Not only interesting, but it is important for us to know about it, I think.  The report says that, in 2004 around 124 criminals got placements for one of the prestigious posts in India. And most importantly, these placements have been done with the consent of us. Getting confused of what I’m speaking..?

Let me tell you clearly. The prestigious post that I am speaking about is M.P, nothing but the Member of the Parliament. By this time, you would have guessed the candidates I believe. As you guess, they were our ‘dear’ politicians of India. We can list a hell a lot of statistical reports showing the worseness of our politicians. This latest report is one among that list.

The National Election Watch, an organization which has tie-up with activists, NGOs and concerned citizens has released this statistical report. It says that around 24%, that is 124 of the elected 543 MPs in the Lok Sabha are criminals. There are criminal cases one or more criminal cases still remain unclear on them. The report does not list out a vague percentage of numbers. They do have came up with a break up number by state wise and party wise along with the individual candidate details.

Since our independence in 1947, we have seen a lot of scams ranging from micro level to that of the giant level. But I think no scam have been ended with an action point, that would prevent any further scam. Each time booms up a scam, we have seen the big names of top political parties involved in it. But still those big names are active in politics boasting their names still big. The political parties are also in no mood to kick them off. Because it did not want to confess that their party member is a culprit and it feels that there needs no change, as all other political parties are the same.

I could feel that there came a friendship or kind of bond into existence between the politics and crime over a period of time. Sometimes ago, I came across an article in a magazine giving an excellent explanation for this bond. It said that politics is about power. To pursuit that power in the highly competitive elections, it needs a huge sum of unaccounted money and muscle power.  This makes the politics to shake its hand with the crime, the mother of above resources.

Coming back to the statistical report, Maharashtra(19 out of 48) and Bihar(16 out of 40) tops the 1^st place with 40% criminal MPs and Uttar Pradesh ranks itself 2^nd with 29% of criminal MPs. To say about the cleanest states, Assam got the credit of none of their 14 MPs have any criminal records. How could I leave the state I’m living in? The state Tamil Nadu (8 out of 39) credit itself with 21% of criminal MPs.  If we go by party wise break up, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party are rated worst and Biju Janata Dal has been rated cleanest among the parties with double digit MPs. In the National party race, BJP (21%) flares with the gold medal, then Congress (18%) comes with silver and CPI (M) (16%) grabs the bronze.

You may think that what’s going to happen out of these statistics. Please stop that thought. Doing something is far better than nothing.  This organization has planned to do more than SOMETHING. They are going to keep track of these individual records. They are going to keep the Governor and Election Commission of India in loop and not going to leave the police too. If any of the cases is going to be get dropped, they are going to get the details from police on which the cases were dropped. If the charges have not dropped, they would find whether the candidate has declared in his affidavit.  If not found in affidavit, they will move petitions to court and EC to reject the candidate.

Now the next question that might have popped up in your mind is “What should I do? “.  This organization has come with a portal “http://www.nocriminals.org” to spread a wide campaign all over the nation.  Poke into the portal and join the campaign. Give your suggestions and feedback to them. Spread the word about the campaign through emails, SMS, social networking sites and blogs. Make the common people who do not have the reach to internet, aware of the campaign. Without the co-operation and support from us, they cannot get the end result.

Having the phenomenal growth of 8% – 9% GDP in the brighter side, we have the darker side of our country being ranked at 72^nd position among 179 countries in the 2008 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index to look on.  Hope you all still believe that we are living in a democratic country. In our society, a common man with criminal charges can’t even get a decent job for his living. But people with lots of criminal charges are being elected to the Parliament and allowed to govern the country. This is the reality happening in our country for which we should feel ashamed.

Let’s all unite and put our hands together to bring out another freedom struggle. This fight is to free our country from the hands of criminals. Let’s put out a big shout together to the political parties to refrain from giving tickets to the persons with criminal backgrounds.