Sunday, April 05, 2009

The Australian News Agency Reports : Indian election candidates with lots of appeal

IN Indian politics you don't get what you don't ask for.

So convicted murderer and parliamentarian Pappu Yadav - currently out on bail pending an appeal against his life sentence - probably thought it was worth a go appealing to the Patna High Court to have his conviction suspended in order to contest this month's national elections.

Yadav, one of the country's more muscular politicians from Bihar - a rural state infamous for its nexus of politics and criminality - was turned down this week. As was former Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt.

The Supreme Court rejected on Tuesday Dutt's appeal to suspend his conviction for possession of illegal weapons - said to have been acquired from terrorist acquaintances - so he could stand for election in the city of Lucknow.

Another incarcerated MP, Mohammed Shahabuddin, convicted and jailed in 2007 for the kidnapping and attempted murder of a Communist Party activist, failed last week to have his conviction suspended for the elections.

Anyone sentenced to jail for more than two years is barred from contesting the polls. But that didn't stop the world's biggest democracy in 2004 from voting in 125 lower house MPs, out of a total of 543, with criminal charges pending.

In one of the world's most litigious countries - where even the Dalai Lama-worshipping Richard Gere once faced a criminal case of obscenity for kissing a Bollywood actress - it's a fair bet many of them are vexatious.

But according to political watchdog website nocriminals.org, almost half of the charges were for serious crimes like rape, murder, kidnapping and banditry.

At least 63 candidates in these elections - which run from April 16 to May 13 - have criminal records.

Indian law bars a person from running for office once they are indicted by a court, which often happens decades after an arrest. It's even harder to dislodge someone actually holding office.

Politicians have been known to win elections from their jail cell.

India's National Social Watch Coalition traces the problem back to the 1980s when big political parties began to woo regional voters - a process that took money and, in some cases, muscle.

It didn't take long for India's criminal element to realise that for all the cash it was investing in politics, it could field its own candidates.

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