Opinion - News Analysis   

Parliament shows the way forward

Neena Vyas

The determined way both Houses acted against the MPs involved in the cash-for-questions case has given rise to hope that something can be done to curb corruption in the country.

FOR DECADES, different episodes of the theatre of the absurd played out on the Indian stage — a scandal involving a top politician, news headlines, trial spread over years if not decades, and then acquittal — have been all too familiar. Whether it was the Bofors story or the Jain hawala case or the Centaur Hotel disinvestment case, the end has always been predictable: a lot of breast-beating, loud accusations, trial by the media, lengthy court battles, and then nothing. The drama played out in the fortnight preceding December 23 last year was, however, entirely different. It produced a result. Eleven MPs of three different political parties lost their membership of Parliament as both the Houses, separately, found them guilty of having accepted cash for asking questions in Parliament. And now there are demands that they should be barred from contesting elections.

On December 12 when a television news channel began showing the video that had caught the MPs in the act of accepting money and stuffing wads of notes in their pockets through a sting operation, the general perception was that this stuff was just entertainment, that nothing much would happen. However, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and Rajya Sabha Chairman Bhairon Singh Shekhawat obtained the necessary political consensus to set up committees to make an assessment of the veracity of the allegations and submit reports within a timeframe. The reports in both the Houses recommended expulsion. And so it was on December 23 the two Houses separately decided to throw the guilty MPs out.

Apparently, since then the Speaker has consulted many legal experts and they are all agreed that, under the Constitution, Parliament was competent to decide on expulsion and that its decision was final. Of course, some of the MPs have gone to court and the matter is expected to come up in the Delhi High Court on Monday. It remains to be seen what the courts do. Will they admit the MPs' petitions or will they dismiss them?

A gratifying aspect of the cash-for-questions scandal was that three of the four political parties whose MPs were caught decided to totally and unconditionally support the move for their expulsion from Parliament. The Congress (with one MP), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (also one MP), and the Bahujan Samaj Party (three MPs) were quick to suspend their members from their parties and support the move to throw them out of Parliament.

However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (six of its MPs were involved in the scandal) surprised even some of its own senior leaders when the then party president and the Leader of the Opposition, L.K. Advani, disassociated his party from the move towards expulsion and walked out of the Lok Sabha minutes before the voting on the expulsion resolution took place. What surprised everyone even more was that just a couple of hours earlier, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Jaswant Singh, made it clear that he would not want the House to be divided on an issue such as this. The BJP members in the Rajya Sabha stayed put in their seats when the House voted to expel the lone Rajya Sabha member involved in the scandal.

Unlike what some may like to believe, corruption as an issue is not dead. The volume of mail received by the office of Mr. Somnath Chatterjee from people across the country lauding the step taken by him and by Parliament is an indication of what the average Indian thinks of the menace that has slowed down development, eroded the authority of democratic institutions and high office, and has even threatened democracy itself. It is common knowledge that the ticket for fighting elections is often auctioned; muscle men are paid handsomely to rig elections; and people are given money allurements to indulge in bogus voting. Even electoral rolls are juggled.

The disinterest displayed by the people in corruption as a major political plank was more because nobody believed any party was willing to grapple with the all-pervasive problem that affects everyone from the street vendor, who has to pay a hefty hafta (weekly pay-off) to the police to the rich builder-contractor, who has to grease the palms of bureaucrats, politicians, and the police. The reason for people's cynicism was not difficult to understand. After all, corruption had helped the rich and the privileged become richer, whether it was the politicians themselves or the big business houses.

Thousands of crores of rupees were flowing each year from the pockets of the ordinary man in the street to the lockers and safe deposits of many of those who were already millionaires. Why would this privileged class help to curb or stop what was enriching them? The determined way in which Parliament acted, however, has helped to fuel hope that something can be done on this front.

A letter by Baikuntha Nath Senapati from village Bhubanapur in Puri, Orissa, (made available to this writer by the Speaker's office) thanks Mr. Chatterjee for "restoring the sanctity of Parliament." The Forum of Non-Governmental Organisations of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra wants criminal cases to be registered against the guilty MPs and steps taken to disqualify them from contesting elections again. A letter writer from Mumbai has pointed out that elected legislators pay scant regard to their main job of debating and passing bills. Thomas John, an 80-year-old man from Hyderabad, has lauded the Speaker but added that expulsion from Parliament was not adequate punishment. And from Patna a citizen has written complimenting the Speaker for his "bold action" in "removing the filthy characters" who "defiled Parliament."

Parliament has only just begun an exercise that would need tremendous grit and will to continue. The parliamentary committee's report on the misuse of the MP's Local Area Development Scheme is awaited. Political parties are not united on the issue of scrapping the scheme under which every MP is entitled to spend Rs.2 crore a year on development in his constituency. What needs to be done is more of what was done on December 23 last year. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha will do the country proud and provide a valuable service to the large majority of MPs who work selflessly to make this democracy work if they help clean the Augean Stables.

Related Stories:
`Courts have no power to intervene'

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Religious reservation and AMU
Public transport for livable cities
Behind Bangalore: the origins of the long jihad
Parliament shows the way forward
Indian TV channels invade Britain
Bullying Iran is not an option for the west
Scandal of force-fed prisoners in Guantanamo
Timely intervention
Exhaustive coverage
A menace
AMU status
LTTE activities
Model legislation
Teachers' importance

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu