1. #The Infosys employee in Bangalore, who was arrested by the Police for urging people to spread the Wuhan Coronavirus among the population, has turned out to be a fan of the radical Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, as per reports. // 2. ## Hundreds of migrant workers, chiefly from West Bengal, took to streets in Kerala’s Kottayam after a Jamaat-e-Islami backed local Malayalam news channel spread fear and panic after Delhi’s mass exodus. // 3 ### The UP Govt accused Arvind Kejriwal led AAP government in Delhi of playing petty politics, lying and spreading rumours, risking the lives of destitute migrant labourers at the time of a crisis as serious as the Coronavirus pandemic. // 4. #### Ai Fen, doctor in Wuhan, who was first to raise alarm over Wuhan Coronavirus, disappears in China after criticizing authorities // Note : #After China & WHO failed to take proactive measures, response by Modi led India is sustained & Participatory : // "URGENT NEED : Time to Bell the Cat" : "THE NETAS" ,....
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The Infosys employee in Bangalore, who was arrested by the Police for urging people to spread the Wuhan Coronavirus among the population, has turned out to be a fan of the radical Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, Deccan Herald has reported. Mujeeb Mohammed had written in a post on social media, “Let’s join hands, go out & sneeze with open mouth in public. Spread the virus.” Later, he was fired by his employers as well.
Mujeeb has been charged under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence and language), 505 (statements conducting to public mischief), 270 (a malignant act to spread the infection of disease dangerous to life) and 109 (abetment, if the act abetted, is committed in consequence of the abetment).
A police officer has reportedly said that Mujeeb Mohammed followed Zakir Naik on social media and watched, ‘liked’ and shared the Radical Islamic preacher’s speeches. “He is into the habit of posting messages that hurt the religious sentiments of other communities,” the officer claimed. Another of Mujeeb Mohammad’s posts says, “My stun gun is ready-killing dogs”. Mujeeb Mohammed’s post urging people to spread the virus had created quite the furore on social media. Netizens demanded strict action from Infosys, adding that such people are a threat to society. Mujeeb was subsequently apprehended by the police.
Zakir Naik has been the inspiration for many radicalized individuals in recent times. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had said in October last year that most of the 127-odd terrorists arrested by security agencies in India for suspected ISIS links were inspired by the speeches of the radical Islamic preacher currently living in Malaysia.
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Hundreds of migrant workers, chiefly from West Bengal, took to streets in Kerala’s Kottayam after a Jamaat-e-Islami backed local Malayalam news channel spread fear and panic after Delhi’s mass exodus.
Hundreds of migrant workers gathered at Payippadu town, in Kottayam, after the representatives of Media One, news channel backed by radical Islamist outfit Jamaat-e-Islami, reached the spot and instigated the people here.
Later, the police and district collector arrived at the place and dispersed the crowd. The incident is Kerala's first mass violation of the nationwide lockdown. With a tally of 202, Kerala has one of the highest number of coronavirus patients in India.
According to the local residents, it was the media team which brought the migrant labourers to the streets for visuals. The I&B Ministry had issued a notice against the Media One channel for ‘promoting communal and anti-national attitude’ in its Delhi riots coverage.
According to reports, there are around 4,000-5,000 migrant workers in the area. The labourers gathered at the spot told media that they have been starving for the last many days as they were not supplied with adequate groceries. They also demanded immediate arrangements to go back to their native places.
“We will ensure you have roti, north Indian food, anything that you need. I’ll personally ensure this. Please don’t crowd like this, it is a huge risk," district collector Jayadev told the crowd.
"None of them say they have a food shortage. They are demanding to return home, which is practically impossible. Both the state and the central directive is to stay wherever you are. They have heard that some northern states like Uttar Pradesh have made arrangements for migrants to return home, which has made them think that they can also return home," the district collector told media.
The Kerala government in a Facebook post said an officer of the rank of principal secretary would be tasked to look after the migrant population. Kerala has an estimated 2.5 million migrant population.
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*Stranded migrant labourers at Delhi-UP border, (courtesy: Rediff.com)
The Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday accused Arvind Kejriwal led AAP government in Delhi of playing petty politics, lying and spreading rumours, risking the lives of migrant workers at the time of a crisis as serious as the Coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by Indian Express.
The UP authorities stated that the Delhi authorities disconnected the water and electrical energy connections of individuals. “Throughout lockdown, individuals weren’t even supplied meals and milk in Delhi,” stated the report quoting UP govt sources. The UP authorities have also alleged that DTC buses dropped off individuals on the Delhi border within the title of assist.
The Delhi government spread unnecessary rumours by making announcements that there were buses at UP border ready to drop individuals to their locations, said the UP govt.
Basically, to do away with the migrant workers in the national capital amidst the pandemic, the AAP government allegedly spread the rumour that buses have been waiting at the UP borders to take them to their respective households. This impelled the mass exodus of these migrant labourers, now camping at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, in an attempt to return to their respective villages.
The report said that the UP CM Yogi Adityanath has stayed up till late last night to overlook the arrangements in order to help these stranded migrants, mostly hailing from UP and Bihar, to return back to their respective homes as soon as possible.
“Till late in the night, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was busy issuing instructions for arranging buses for the purpose,” the spokesman said, adding that the CM also directed officials to arrange for food and water for such people and their families. “At night, transportation officials, drivers and conductors were called from home,” said the statement, adding that 1,000 buses were arranged at night to bring back people stuck on the Delhi border.
On Saturday morning, senior police officers reached the Charbagh bus station in Lucknow to ensure that those arriving there were provided with food and water.
The buses later left for Kanpur, Ballia, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Faizabad, Basti, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Amethi, Rae Bareli, Gonda, Etawah, Bahraich and Shravasti.
State’s DGP Hitesh Chandra Awasthi and Lucknow Police Commissioner Sujit Kumar Pande, were personally present at the bus depot to monitor the arrangements, the spokesman added.
The Uttar Pradesh government has claimed that these migrant workers will be ferried home to their respective villages free of cost but will be screened for the novel coronavirus first.
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*Ai Fen, director of the emergency at Wuhan Central hospital. Photograph: Renwu/Handout
Ai Fen, director of the emergency at Wuhan Central hospital, has disappeared after criticizing Chinese authorities over their handling of the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic. She was the first person to raise the alarm over the virus. Her whereabouts remain unknown. She had alerted her superiors and colleagues of a SARS-like virus seen in patients in December, however, she was reprimanded. Eventually, after seeing so many people die, she criticized the authorities for suppressing early warnings of the outbreak in an interview. The Chinese government has subsequently been trying hard to get the interview off the internet.
It was only two weeks ago that Ai Fen had gone public with her story and spoken to a Chinese magazine, Renwu.
“If I had known what was to happen, I would not have cared about the reprimand. I would have fucking talked about it to whoever, where ever I could,” she said in the interview, as reported by The Guardian. On the 30th of December, Ai had received the lab test results of a patient suffering from flu-like symptoms and resistant to the usual treatment methods. It said ‘SARS Coronavirus’. She took a picture of the results and sent it to a former medical school classmate. By evening, the photo had spread across medical circles in Wuhan.
The same night, Ai Fen received a message from the authorities at her hospital saying that information about this new disease should not be released arbitrarily in order to avoid causing panic. Two days later, after being summoned by the head of the hospital’s disciplinary inspection committee, she was reprimanded for “spreading rumours” and “harming stability”. Subsequently, the staff was forbidden from passing messages or images related to the virus.
“We watched more and more patients come in as the radius of the spread of infection became larger,” Ai Fen said as the doctors began seeing patients with no connection to the epicentre of the pandemic in Wuhan, its wet market. “I knew there must be human to human transmission,” she said. Her observation was eventually confirmed by the Chinese authorities on the 21st of January when cases had already increased exponentially.
After this interview went public two weeks ago, President Xi ordered her interview erased from the internet. Dr Ai Fen herself has disappeared now, whereabouts unknown.
Ai Fen, however, denied that she is a whistleblower. “I am the one who provided the whistle,” she insisted. Nevertheless she has disappeared now, as so many dissidents in China often do, and her whereabouts are unknown. Dr Li Wenliang, the doctor who had tried to warn others about a SARS-like epidemic in Wuhan, had died on February 7, after days of treating coronavirus infected patients at a hospital in Wuhan. He was also one of the doctors who were warned by Wuhan authorities not to ‘spread rumours’. The Chinese authorities issued an apology to the family of the deceased doctor for the manner in which he was treated when he was alive.
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The world is facing a double shock of World War proportions, to both the health of the population as well as its economic prospects. Entire sectors of the economy have been shut down in an effort to save what could be millions of lives. Almost every family has been affected by the Covid-19 earthquake that first began in the final six weeks of 2019 in Wuhan, a city in China of 11 million people.
The tragedy is not simply the disease and the outbreak followed by epidemic followed by pandemic that has occurred since its appearance in a "live animals for food" market in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. The tragedy is not simply that it took six weeks for authorities in the province to accept the view of a few perceptive doctors and researchers there that the new disease that they were treating could develop into a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions unless contained early.
Instead of heeding the whistleblowers, they were condemned as "anti-national" and the most perceptive, Wenliang Li, was forced by the police to recant in 2020, the way Pope Urban VIII forced Galileo Galilei in 1663 to recant his discovery that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around. Those in Wuhan who acted against the doctor rather than the virus at a time when it could have been contained within a small perimeter are guilty of the mass murder of at least 15,000 victims of Covid-19 ( a figure that could reach into the millions) and the shutdown of the global economy consequent to the emergence of the pandemic.
Throughout January, when it was clear that the highly infectious killer novel coronavirus was on the loose, not even in China was the alarm sounded with sufficient force. Searches for the virus on Baidu were muted until January 23, 2020, soon after Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping assumed direct control of the fightback and sealed off Wuhan from the rest of the country. Interestingly, although searches on Baidu ( mostly within China) were low in number throughout the period leading up to the lockdown, Google searches from the rest of the world were rising.
Another reason why Covid-19 formed and subsequently grew into a pandemic was the fact that markets offering live birds,animals, mammals and sea species of different kinds continued to function throughout China despite the 2003 SARS epidemic demonstrating the danger of allowing such retail commerce. Several studies conducted by Chinese experts warned of the risk to public health caused by such trade, but the extensive machinery of the Communist Party and the state run by it failed to pay heed and bring such activities to a halt. This led towards the close of 2019 to the global calamity that emerged in the winter of last year from the "live food" market in Wuhan.
In the absence of a clear indication of the extreme seriousness of the situation from either the Chinese government or the World Health Organisation, governments across the world hesitated to take action. In the UK or Italy, for example, flights from and to Wuhan were allowed to land and take off even while India had shut its airports to all traffic from and to China. The impression even within the US was that the outbreak would be contained even within China, and that the risk to the rest of the world was negligible, a misreading of the situation that shows the incompetence of US agencies in ascertaining what the factual conditions in China actually were. The major powers believed that Chinese authorities would rapidly bring the situation under control and not allow it to spread. Such action finally took place during the second half of January, but not until CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping directly intervened to lead the fight against a virus that by that stage threatened to drag China into an economic quagmire and a public health nightmare.
Once the crisis became obvious, among the first of world leaders to act was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who barred entry of visitors from China, following the examples of Taiwan and Singapore. Should India escape an elevated curve for community transmission or Stage III of the Covid-19 outbreak, the credit will go to Modi for his unprecedented action in first blocking access to India from China and thereafter wisely extending visa cancellations to Europe, at a time when it was not yet certain that the European Union had become the epicentre of a health emergency that was coming under control in China.
Subsequently, the rest of the world was cut off from India. On March 19, Prime Minister Modi gave a historic call for an all-day "Janata Curfew" a few days later, a measure designed to break the chain of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, assisted by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Heath Minister Harsh Vardhan have initiated multiple steps to protect the 1.29 billion people of India from going the Iran or Italy way during the present pandemic. If only authorities in Hubei had heeded Dr Wenliang Li rather than persecuted him, both China as well as the rest of the world would have been spared the situation that is now deluging the world. If only the rest of the world had been alerted to the immensity of the crisis by January 1, 2020 rather than only after the sealing off of Wuhan was announced on January 23, the global economy would not have been as close to the ICU that it is now, and countless may have been saved.
The Covid-19 pandemic shows the importance of transmitting bad news up the administrative ladder at speed, especially in governance systems where only good news gets moved upwards while bad news gets suppressed, as the novel coronavirus outbreak in Hubei initially was for six precious weeks after its toxicity and incurable nature was accepted by Hubei authorities in mid-November, reaching the highest levels of the Chinese system residing in Beijing only by 27 December, 2019. It took a further three weeks before President Xi decided to directly intervene and order unprecedented steps which jolted the world out of its complacency. Nine weeks that have shaken the world. Nine weeks during which action could have been taken to ensure that the deep,dark pit that first China,then Europe, and now the US and others in the global community have fallen into could have been avoided.
The contrasting examples of China in 2019 and India in 2018 show what a difference a quick and effective response to a disease makes. Like Covid-19, the Nipah virus that struck Kerala on May 2,2018 originated in the bat population. In coordination with the National Institute of Virology in Pune and the Manipal Institute of Virology, the Kerala state government immediately placed more than 2300 individuals in the districts of Malappuram and Kozhikode in quarantine, and imported a drug from Australia that had not yet completed testing for general use. After confirming that the outbreak was a potential health hazard, the state government issued an advisory on May 23 and joined hands with the central government to access what knowledge about the disease (which is fatal in almost 90% of cases) was available globally. Useful information was secured from Malaysia, especially relating to treatment, that ensured the saving of a two patients, while 17 died. The Nipah outbreak was officially declared over on 10 June, less than six weeks after the first case was identified in the Government Medical College, Kozhikode.
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As mentioned, when a doctor in Wuhan warned that a new virus was on the loose and needed to be eliminated quickly, rather than act upon his suggestion, the provincial authorities labelled him as "anti-state" and forced him to write a confession that he was nothing but an alarmist. This while the novel coronavirus was spreading like a blaze among the people during the final weeks of 2019. It was only in the very close of that year when provincial authorities conveyed the depth of the problem to the leadership in Beijing. By that time, several million people had left Hubei and gone to other parts of China as well as abroad. Several of them were carriers, many rendered more deadly because they themselves had no symptoms of the disease that they were passing on to any individual who came in contact with them or with any surface touched by them.
Unlike the case of Kerala government which alerted the central government as soon as the first case of Nipah was detected, Chinese provincial authorities continued to believe that the infection could be localised, and that they could handle it o their own. By their hesitation in conveying bad news to a higher - indeed, the highest - level of the Chinese governance system, these officials have caused a global disaster. After getting information of the outbreak of this new disease, it took a further three weeks for the central authorities to sound the alarm globally. Only by the close of January 2020, after President Xi Jinping took the unprecedented step of closing off an entire city of 11 million and a province from the rest of the country did governments across the world realize that they were facing a public health disaster. Some responded swiftly - including India and Singapore - while others such as Italy and France failed to understand the danger to their own public.
First Singapore and then India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi shut the entry door to visitors from China. Later, when it became clear that Europe was badly infected with Covid-19, visitors from across Europe were blocked from coming to India. Unfortunately, several foreign tourists were already in the country, while later on, Indian citizens who had been visiting Europe returned. Some within these two groups brought with them the novel coronavirus. Coordinated action by the PMO, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Health Ministry ensured that community spread was prevented, at least till the time of writing this report. Should India escape the ravages of Stage III ( community spread) or have a very shallow curve of such infections, it would go as mentioned earlier to the credit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been assisted by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Union Health Minister Harshvardhan.
From the start, they understood the depth of the calamity that could befall India were the most extreme action not taken, action that they ( with the assistance of the Indian Council for Medical Research) took from the very start of the period when they first were made aware of the depths of the crisis through the Wuhan lockdown. Avoiding the worst would also go to the credit of the people of India, for Covid-19 can only be eliminated by a community effort involving every citizen. Just as a single thread can unravel a fabric, a single individual can put to naught efforts at containing Covid-19. The call for social distancing given by the Prime Minister on March 19 needs to be obeyed by the entire population, so that India escapes the ravages of the disease in a manner that Italy or Iran have been unable to do because social distancing was not taken seriously by their populations in time.
By contrast, in India Prime Minister Modi has been able to motivate the overwhelming majority of the population to practice safe conduct, although there remain a few citizens who are irresponsible enough to risk calamity for other citizens and the economy through flouting the few simple rules needed to protect both themselves as well as the nation from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
That the Government of India has had to rely even during the Covid-19 epidemic on a law that was first brought into effect in 1897 shows the need to ensure that the overwhelmingly colonial-era system of laws and regulations still faithfully adhered to by the governance mechanism needs to change. The Indian Penal Code has to reflect not 19th century but 21st century values and needs. The new structure should reflect the importance of involving Civil Society in the processes of governance through formal methods of consultation and monitoring, rather than concentrating such authority solely in the Civil Service.
Freedoms taken away by the addition of the First Amendment to the Constitution of India should be restored, while the legal system needs to deliver transparent justice ( including through live streaming of all court proceedings) that takes decreed within a time frame that is closer to that of other major economies. An audit needs to be conducted by an independent authority of the economic and financial effects of court judgments, many of which lead to substantial consequences,including the shutting down of several industrial units. Such an audit is also called for where the National Green Tribunal is concerned. India must certainly be as green and as filled with sustainability as possible, but this must be in a manner that takes into account the needs of the human population for income and employment, the foundation for a good life.
Several NGOs recommend measures that assume that human beings have no right to rights and that decisions should be taken irrespective of the human cost, as for example in the forced closing of large units rather than making them adopt clean technologies and continue operations. A table showing the number of cases as well as the time taken for disposal by each member of the Bench needs to be prepared for courts and placed online. The country has been waiting for decades for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who would ensure that the judicial reforms needed for transparency and accountability within this very powerful Estate of the State get carried out, and hopefully such reforms will not long remain unfulfilled. India has an exceptionally qualified judiciary, and as such it is reasonable to believe that such necessary reforms are not an impossibility but can become a reality that reinforces public confidence in the judiciary.
While the public health effects of the Covid-19 epidemic are being energetically tackled by the Modi government, what is as important is the health of the economy. A three month moratorium on loan repayments and interest payments both in the case of private moneylender loans and those of the banking system need to be enforced, so as to ensure that a flood of NPAs and bankruptcies do not get caused by circumstances beyond the control of the financial and economic victims of the 2020 public health emergency.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak of the UK has put in place a scheme to ensure that 80% of the salaries of workers get paid by the state, so that layoffs are minimised. Retraining workers and restarting businesses from scratch are very difficult, and a similar scheme needs to be carried out in India for workers and employees. Compensation can be paid for salaries upto a maximum of Rs 10 lakhs per person annualised, so that businesses do not retrench citizens during these months of Covid-19 stress. Former Finance Minister P Chdambaram has evidently never travelled to Europe in his life, for he kept on telling taxpayers that the rate of tax was the same as in several countries in the EU. Chidambaram was clearly unaware of the many benefits that citizens in those parts of the world get from the state. In India, even the poor pawn their gold jewellery to avoid public hospitals and schools, not to talk of the average taxpayer. Chidambaram clearly believes that government schools, hospitals and other services are at the same level as in the EU, and may be they are for a VVIP like him, but not for 99.9 per cent of the citizens of India.
There has long been need for direct and indirect tax reform as well as an overhaul of a regulatory structure that strangulates industry and trade while doing nothing to end endemic corruption, as for example through using corrupt officials to hound innovators in India so that alternatives to what they have discovered may get imported. It is not an accident that India is dependent on imports for so many critical items, and the answer lies in the obstacles placed on domestic producers in order to clear the way for imports.
The Covid-19 epidemic is a crisis that needs to jolt the governance system into making itself such as to give the people of India the policy ecosystem needed for double digit growth. That is the challenge facing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he works round the clock to ensure that India recovers from a fever that has travelled from Wuhan to all parts of the world.
(The author is Professor of Geopolitics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education)
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The person, against whom charges have been framed in serious offences, should be barred from contesting the election and becoming political office bearer. A convicted person should also be debarred from contesting election and or becoming political office bearer for life
“It needs little argument to hold that the heart of the Parliamentary system is free and fair elections periodically held, based on adult franchise, although social and economic democracy may demand much more.” (Supreme Court of India in 1978)
This one quote, although more than four decades old, speaks volume on the importance of democracy, and hence, purity in the election process. It is trite to say but important to note that a fair and unbiased electoral process, with greater citizen participation, is fundamental to safeguarding the values of democracy.
Maintaining the quality of the electoral process, however, requires a multi-pronged approach, which includes removing the influence of money and criminal elements in politics, expediting the disposal of election petitions, introducing internal democracy and financial transparency in the functioning of the political parties, strengthening the Election Commission of India, and regulating opinion polls and curbing paid news. Unfortunately, these are some of the issues, which have plagued the Indian electoral system over the decades and have eroded the trust of many people in the country. Consequently, over the years, a number of committees have examined some of the major challenges and issues affecting India’s electoral system and have made suggestions accordingly. Both the Law Commission in its 170th Report on “Reform of the Electoral Laws” in 1999 and the Election Commission in its seminal 2004 “Proposed Electoral Reforms” report have addressed some of these challenges. Other Committees and Commissions, which have examined these issues, are: The Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms (1990); The Vohra Committee Report (1993); The Indrajit Gupta Committee on State Funding of Elections (1998); The Law Commission Report on Reform of the Electoral Laws (1999); The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (2001); The ECI Proposed Electoral Reforms (2004) and The Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2008). Unfortunately, their recommendations were not followed by legislative action, required for the enhancement of the quality of democracy, by reducing the influence of money and media in politics and ensuring free and fair elections.
Especially in the context of ethnic divisions such as caste and religion, criminals are able to get votes based on their caste or religious affiliation, their money power, their perceived willingness to ‘bend’, if not break, the law to favour their constituently and also because of coercion and intimidation including their rivals. Criminals, in turn, have no interest in standing as independents but stand as candidates of political parties. Criminals want to stand as candidates of political parties because parties are still connected to powerful leaders, families, ethnic groups and social bases. Aspiring candidates can tap into these networks to expand their appeal beyond their own narrow support bases. Second, in a country with high rates of poverty and illiteracy, party symbols hold great weight; they serve as an important visual cue through which millions of voters connect to politics. As such, the historical legacy of parties matter a great deal in Indian democracy.
The consequences of permitting criminals to contest and become legislators are extremely determental to for our democracy and secularism: (i) during the electoral process itself, not only do they deploy “enormous amounts of illegal money” to influence the outcome but also intimidate voters and rival candidates. (ii) Thereafter, in our weak rule-of-law context, once they gain entry to the governance as legislators, they interfere with, and influence the functioning of government machinery in favour of themselves and members of their organisation by corrupting government officers and, where if does not work, by using their contacts with Ministers to make threats of transfer and initiation of disciplinary proceedings. Some even become Ministers, which makes the situation worse. (iii) Legislators with criminal antecedents also attempt to subvert the administration of justice and attempt by hook or crook to prevent cases against themselves from being concluded and, where possible, to obtain acquittals. Long delays in disposal of cases against sitting MP’s and MLA’s and low conviction rates are testimony to their influence.
The empirical evidence supports the view that the current legislative framework permits criminals to become a legislator. It (a) interferes with the purity and integrity of the electoral process; (b) violates the right to choose freely the candidate of the voter’s choice and, therefore, the freedom of expression of the voter under Article 19(1)(a); (c) amounts to a subversion of democracy, which is part of the basic structure; and, finally, (d) is antithetical to the rule of law which is at core of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.
Criminalisation of politics in India has only grown. National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have analyzed the self-sworn affidavits of 539 out of 542 MPs of the present Lok Sabha. Elections in Vellore constituency had been cancelled and 3 MPs were not analyzed due to unavailability of their clear and complete affidavits on the ECI website at the time of making the report. Out of 539 MPs, 233 (43%) MPs have declared criminal cases against themselves. Out of 542 winners analyzed after 2014 General Election, 185 (34%) had declared criminal cases against themselves and out of 543 winners analyzed after 2009 Lok Sabha election, 162 (30%) had declared criminal cases against themselves. There is an increase of 44% in the number of MPs with declared criminal cases since 2009.
Presently 159 (29%) MPs have declared serious criminal cases including cases related to rape, murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, crimes against women etc. Out of 542 winners analyzed after 2014 Lok Sabha elections, 112 (21%) had declared serious criminal cases against themselves. Out of 543 winners analyzed after 2009 Lok Sabha election, 76 (14%) had declared serious criminal cases against themselves. So, there is an increase of 109 % in the number of winners with declared serious criminal cases since 2009.
Kuriakose from Idukki Constituency has declared 204 criminal cases including cases related to culpable homicide, house trespass, robbery, criminal intimidation etc. Total 30 MPs of the present Lok Sabha, have declared cases of attempt to murder (Section 307), 19 MPs have declared cases related to crimes against women and out of these 19 MPs, 3 MPs have declared cases related to rape (IPC Section-376). Total 29 MPs have declared cases related to hate speech.
ADR Report indicates that the chances of winning for a candidate with declared criminal cases in the Lok Sabha 2019 are 15.5 % whereas, for a candidate with a clean background, it is 4.7 %. Total 116 (39%) out of 301 winners from BJP, 29 (57%) out of 51 winners from INC, 10 (43%) out of 23 winners from DMK, 9 (41%) out of 22 winners fielded by AITC and 13 (81%) out of 16 winners from JD(U) have declared criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits. Total 87 (29%) out of 301 winners from BJP, 19 (37%) out of 51 winners from INC, 6 (26%) out of 23 winners from DMK, 4 (18%) out of 22 winners fielded by AITC and 8 (50%) out of 16 winners from JD(U) have declared serious criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits.
Out of the 539 MPs analyzed, 475 (88%) are crorepathis. Out of 542 winners analyzed during Lok Sabha 2014 election, 443 (82%) winners were crorepathis. Out of 543 winners analyzed during Lok Sabha 2009 election, 315 (58%) winners were crorepathis. Total 265 (88%) out of 301 MPs of BJP, 43 (84%) out of 51 MPs of INC, 22 (96%) out of 23 MPs of DMK, 20 (91%) out of 22 MPs of AITC, 19 (86%) out of 22 MPs of YSRCP and 18 (100%) MPs of SS have declared assets worth more than Rs. 1 crore. The chance of winning for a crorepathi candidate in the Lok Sabha 2019 is 21%, whereas chance of winning for a candidate with assets less than Rs. 1 crore is 1%. A total of 4 out of the 539 winners analyzed have not declared their PAN details. The average assets of 225 re-elected MPs fielded by various parties including independents in 2014 was Rs 17.07 crore. The average asset of these 225 re-elected MPs in 2019 is Rs 21.94 crore. The average asset growth for these 225 re-elected MPs, between the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019 is Rs 4.87 crore. Average percentage growth in assets for the 225 re-elected MPs is 29%.
Presently, 128 (24%) MPs have declared their educational qualification to be between 5th pass and 12th pass, while 392 (73%) MPs have declared having an educational qualification of graduate and above. One MP has declared himself to be just literate and One MP is illiterate. 194 (36%) MPs have declared their age to be between 25 and 50 years while 343 (64%) MPs have declared their age to be between 51 and 80 years. Two MPs have declared they are more than 80 years old. Presently, there are 77 (14%) women MPs. Out of 542 winners analyzed in the Lok Sabha elections 2014, 62 (11%) winners were women. Out of 543 winners analyzed in the Lok Sabha elections 2009, 59 (11%) winners were women.
What is alarming is that the percentage of candidates with criminal past and their chances of winning have actually increased steadily over the years. In fact, the empirical analysis shows that, where the charges against a candidate are serious, it slightly increases the statistical probability of his winning the election. Criminals who earlier used to help politicians win elections in the hope of getting favours appear to have cut out the “middle man” in favour of entering politics themselves. Political parties, in turn, have become steadily more reliant on criminals as candidates not only because they “self-finance” their own elections in an era where election contests have become phenomenally expensive but also because candidates with criminal antecedents are more likely to win than “clean” candidates. Political parties are competing with each other in a race to the bottom because they cannot afford to leave their competitors free to recruit criminals. Despite the above data, the Government has not taken apposite steps to tackle the menace of criminalisation.
India’s democratic setup is a paradigm for many countries in the world due to its remarkable success over the past seven decades. The heart of India’s democratic system witnesses regular elections with the participation of the largest electorate in the world. In order to safeguard the core values of fair and free elections in this dynamic scenario, it is important to have a just and unbiased electoral process with greater citizen participation. Thus, in accordance to the responsibility bestowed upon by the Constitution of India, the Election Commission of India has always remained actively involved in finding out ways through which the purity and integrity of the election process are preserved. However, there are certain challenges and issues that the electoral system has faced over the years. Trust and confidence of citizens in the electoral system can be affected if these challenges remain unattended. Thus, keeping in view these difficulties the Election Commission of India after conducting extensive study and research recommends certain changes that need to be taken up expeditiously to amend certain provisions of law. Taking forward a step in this direction, the Commission have made several electoral proposals to remove the glaring lacunae in the law. Many of these proposals have been already put forth by the Commission have remained unresolved. Some of the proposals pertain to areas which have not been taken up previously by the Commission but arose due to the implementation of certain laws or on the directions issued by the Supreme Court and the High Courts. Commission considers it necessary to put all proposals on electoral reforms in the public domain for the benefit of people. The Election Commission sincerely believes that these suggested reforms will prove to be extremely useful in addressing the existing issues and challenges and would go a long way in enhancing the quality of democracy.
One of the notable features for which India is known to the world is its electoral Democracy. However, in order to call a system truly Democratic, it is necessary that it must reflect the political and socioeconomic aspirations of its people. The issue of electoral reforms has been taken up by Parliament, the Government, the Judiciary, the Media and the Election Commission on numerous occasions. The Election Commission during all these times has striven to bring positive changes in the electoral system for better implementation. There has been various correspondence exchanged between the government and the Election Commission to ensure that the required electoral reforms are brought in place. However, for strengthening the existing system and removing the difficulties arising in ensuring free and fair elections the Election Commission stresses that various steps are required to be taken for the better practice in election-related matters. Maintaining the purity and transparency of the election process is a very challenging job and involves a lot of inherent complexities. However, the Commission in its endeavour has always tried to ensure the fairness in elections by putting in tremendous efforts in line with all stakeholders. Therefore, these proposals besides giving a perspective on the challenges faced during the elections, seek to provide a comprehensive framework about the ways in which these challenges can be effectively dealt.
Government should take appropriate steps to set minimum qualification and maximum age limit for contesting the election. A Legislators Eligibility Test (LET) on the lines of Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) can be started to make it more effective. It is also essential to ban the Legislators from practising other professions till they demit the office. Political Donation in cash should be restricted to 2,000 rupees per person per year. Political parties should be brought under the RTI and Tax Relief should be given to only those who contest the election and win the seat.
pecial Courts should be set up for MLAs and MPs in each district Court and every High Court to decide the cases of legislators within one year. The person, against whom charges have been framed in serious offences, should be barred from contesting the election and becoming political office bearer and a convicted person should be debarred from contesting the election and becoming political office bearer for life.
Election Commission should take steps to rename political parties having names related to caste, religion, language, and region and a Law should be enacted to curtail misuse of caste, religion, language and region for electoral gain. It’s high time to enact a Law to promote inner-party democracy and financial transparency and define the roles and responsibilities of legislators. Past experience confirms that the FPTP system is not very effective hence Hybrid System (FPTP and Proportional Representation System) should be adopted.
There must be a complete ban on govt-sponsored advertisement, paid news, political advertisement and Opinion Poll in the last six months. Cooling period should be five days and there must be a complete ban on advertisement and campaigning. Common Electoral Rolls should be used in all elections and Totalizer should be used for counting votes. Election Commission should ascertain the feasibility of Aadhaar based voting system and there must be re-poll if NOTA gets maximum votes. Post Offices should be used as nodal agency for voter registration and there must be a ban on contesting for the same office from more than one constituency.
Appointment of Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners should be through Collegium of Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India and Leader of Opposition. Election Commission should have the Rule Making power like Supreme Court and power of de-registration of political parties. An independent secretariat of Election Commission is also essential for complete independence. Budget of Election Commission should be charged from the consolidated fund.
(The writer is an advocate, Supreme Court of India)
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JAI HIND
JAI BHARATHAM
VANDHE MATHARAM
BHARAT MATHA KI JAI.
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# OPINION : 31/03/2020 : 2113.
# 1. Mujeeb Mohammed, the Infosys employee who urged people to ‘spread the coronavirus’, followed Zakir Naik on social media: Report : 30 March, 2020 : Opindia.
#The Infosys employee in Bangalore, who was arrested by the Police for urging people to spread the Wuhan Coronavirus among the population, has turned out to be a fan of the radical Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, as per reports.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Infosys employee in Bangalore, who was arrested by the Police for urging people to spread the Wuhan Coronavirus among the population, has turned out to be a fan of the radical Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, Deccan Herald has reported. Mujeeb Mohammed had written in a post on social media, “Let’s join hands, go out & sneeze with open mouth in public. Spread the virus.” Later, he was fired by his employers as well.
Mujeeb has been charged under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence and language), 505 (statements conducting to public mischief), 270 (a malignant act to spread the infection of disease dangerous to life) and 109 (abetment, if the act abetted, is committed in consequence of the abetment).
A police officer has reportedly said that Mujeeb Mohammed followed Zakir Naik on social media and watched, ‘liked’ and shared the Radical Islamic preacher’s speeches. “He is into the habit of posting messages that hurt the religious sentiments of other communities,” the officer claimed. Another of Mujeeb Mohammad’s posts says, “My stun gun is ready-killing dogs”. Mujeeb Mohammed’s post urging people to spread the virus had created quite the furore on social media. Netizens demanded strict action from Infosys, adding that such people are a threat to society. Mujeeb was subsequently apprehended by the police.
Zakir Naik has been the inspiration for many radicalized individuals in recent times. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had said in October last year that most of the 127-odd terrorists arrested by security agencies in India for suspected ISIS links were inspired by the speeches of the radical Islamic preacher currently living in Malaysia.
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## 2. Islamists to sabotage corona lockdown? Jamaat-e-Islami backed news channel create panic; Migrant workers take to streets, violate curfew in Kerala : 30-Mar-2020 : Organiser.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hundreds of migrant workers, chiefly from West Bengal, took to streets in Kerala’s Kottayam after a Jamaat-e-Islami backed local Malayalam news channel spread fear and panic after Delhi’s mass exodus.
Hundreds of migrant workers gathered at Payippadu town, in Kottayam, after the representatives of Media One, news channel backed by radical Islamist outfit Jamaat-e-Islami, reached the spot and instigated the people here.
Later, the police and district collector arrived at the place and dispersed the crowd. The incident is Kerala's first mass violation of the nationwide lockdown. With a tally of 202, Kerala has one of the highest number of coronavirus patients in India.
According to the local residents, it was the media team which brought the migrant labourers to the streets for visuals. The I&B Ministry had issued a notice against the Media One channel for ‘promoting communal and anti-national attitude’ in its Delhi riots coverage.
According to reports, there are around 4,000-5,000 migrant workers in the area. The labourers gathered at the spot told media that they have been starving for the last many days as they were not supplied with adequate groceries. They also demanded immediate arrangements to go back to their native places.
“We will ensure you have roti, north Indian food, anything that you need. I’ll personally ensure this. Please don’t crowd like this, it is a huge risk," district collector Jayadev told the crowd.
"None of them say they have a food shortage. They are demanding to return home, which is practically impossible. Both the state and the central directive is to stay wherever you are. They have heard that some northern states like Uttar Pradesh have made arrangements for migrants to return home, which has made them think that they can also return home," the district collector told media.
The Kerala government in a Facebook post said an officer of the rank of principal secretary would be tasked to look after the migrant population. Kerala has an estimated 2.5 million migrant population.
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### 3. Manufactured crisis? Delhi govt cut electricity and water supply of migrant workers, told them buses were waiting for them at UP border : 28 March, 2020 : Opindia.
### The UP Govt accused Arvind Kejriwal led AAP government in Delhi of playing petty politics, lying and spreading rumours, risking the lives of destitute migrant labourers at the time of a crisis as serious as the Coronavirus pandemic.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Uttar Pradesh government on Saturday accused Arvind Kejriwal led AAP government in Delhi of playing petty politics, lying and spreading rumours, risking the lives of migrant workers at the time of a crisis as serious as the Coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by Indian Express.
The UP authorities stated that the Delhi authorities disconnected the water and electrical energy connections of individuals. “Throughout lockdown, individuals weren’t even supplied meals and milk in Delhi,” stated the report quoting UP govt sources. The UP authorities have also alleged that DTC buses dropped off individuals on the Delhi border within the title of assist.
The Delhi government spread unnecessary rumours by making announcements that there were buses at UP border ready to drop individuals to their locations, said the UP govt.
Basically, to do away with the migrant workers in the national capital amidst the pandemic, the AAP government allegedly spread the rumour that buses have been waiting at the UP borders to take them to their respective households. This impelled the mass exodus of these migrant labourers, now camping at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, in an attempt to return to their respective villages.
The report said that the UP CM Yogi Adityanath has stayed up till late last night to overlook the arrangements in order to help these stranded migrants, mostly hailing from UP and Bihar, to return back to their respective homes as soon as possible.
“Till late in the night, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was busy issuing instructions for arranging buses for the purpose,” the spokesman said, adding that the CM also directed officials to arrange for food and water for such people and their families. “At night, transportation officials, drivers and conductors were called from home,” said the statement, adding that 1,000 buses were arranged at night to bring back people stuck on the Delhi border.
On Saturday morning, senior police officers reached the Charbagh bus station in Lucknow to ensure that those arriving there were provided with food and water.
The buses later left for Kanpur, Ballia, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Faizabad, Basti, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Amethi, Rae Bareli, Gonda, Etawah, Bahraich and Shravasti.
State’s DGP Hitesh Chandra Awasthi and Lucknow Police Commissioner Sujit Kumar Pande, were personally present at the bus depot to monitor the arrangements, the spokesman added.
The Uttar Pradesh government has claimed that these migrant workers will be ferried home to their respective villages free of cost but will be screened for the novel coronavirus first.
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#### 4. Ai Fen, doctor in Wuhan, who was first to raise alarm over Wuhan Coronavirus, disappears in China after criticizing authorities : 30 March, 2020 : Opindia.
#### On the 30th of December, Ai had received the lab test results of a patient suffering from flu-like symptoms and resistant to the usual treatment methods. It said 'SARS Coronavirus'. She took a picture of the results and sent it to a former medical school classmate. By evening, the photo had spread across medical circles in Wuhan.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ai Fen, director of the emergency at Wuhan Central hospital, has disappeared after criticizing Chinese authorities over their handling of the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic. She was the first person to raise the alarm over the virus. Her whereabouts remain unknown. She had alerted her superiors and colleagues of a SARS-like virus seen in patients in December, however, she was reprimanded. Eventually, after seeing so many people die, she criticized the authorities for suppressing early warnings of the outbreak in an interview. The Chinese government has subsequently been trying hard to get the interview off the internet.
It was only two weeks ago that Ai Fen had gone public with her story and spoken to a Chinese magazine, Renwu.
“If I had known what was to happen, I would not have cared about the reprimand. I would have fucking talked about it to whoever, where ever I could,” she said in the interview, as reported by The Guardian. On the 30th of December, Ai had received the lab test results of a patient suffering from flu-like symptoms and resistant to the usual treatment methods. It said ‘SARS Coronavirus’. She took a picture of the results and sent it to a former medical school classmate. By evening, the photo had spread across medical circles in Wuhan.
The same night, Ai Fen received a message from the authorities at her hospital saying that information about this new disease should not be released arbitrarily in order to avoid causing panic. Two days later, after being summoned by the head of the hospital’s disciplinary inspection committee, she was reprimanded for “spreading rumours” and “harming stability”. Subsequently, the staff was forbidden from passing messages or images related to the virus.
“We watched more and more patients come in as the radius of the spread of infection became larger,” Ai Fen said as the doctors began seeing patients with no connection to the epicentre of the pandemic in Wuhan, its wet market. “I knew there must be human to human transmission,” she said. Her observation was eventually confirmed by the Chinese authorities on the 21st of January when cases had already increased exponentially.
After this interview went public two weeks ago, President Xi ordered her interview erased from the internet. Dr Ai Fen herself has disappeared now, whereabouts unknown.
Ai Fen, however, denied that she is a whistleblower. “I am the one who provided the whistle,” she insisted. Nevertheless she has disappeared now, as so many dissidents in China often do, and her whereabouts are unknown. Dr Li Wenliang, the doctor who had tried to warn others about a SARS-like epidemic in Wuhan, had died on February 7, after days of treating coronavirus infected patients at a hospital in Wuhan. He was also one of the doctors who were warned by Wuhan authorities not to ‘spread rumours’. The Chinese authorities issued an apology to the family of the deceased doctor for the manner in which he was treated when he was alive.
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Note : #After China & WHO failed to take proactive measures, response by Modi led India is sustained & Participatory : 26-Mar-2020 : MD NALAPAT: Organiser.
*M.D.Nalapat
#PM Modi has been able to motivate majority of the population to practice safe conduct. But the challenge facing him as he works round the clock to ensure that India recovers from Corona outbreak, is to jolt the governance system to provide a policy ecosystem needed for double digit growth.
The world is facing a double shock of World War proportions, to both the health of the population as well as its economic prospects. Entire sectors of the economy have been shut down in an effort to save what could be millions of lives. Almost every family has been affected by the Covid-19 earthquake that first began in the final six weeks of 2019 in Wuhan, a city in China of 11 million people.
The tragedy is not simply the disease and the outbreak followed by epidemic followed by pandemic that has occurred since its appearance in a "live animals for food" market in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. The tragedy is not simply that it took six weeks for authorities in the province to accept the view of a few perceptive doctors and researchers there that the new disease that they were treating could develop into a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions unless contained early.
Instead of heeding the whistleblowers, they were condemned as "anti-national" and the most perceptive, Wenliang Li, was forced by the police to recant in 2020, the way Pope Urban VIII forced Galileo Galilei in 1663 to recant his discovery that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around. Those in Wuhan who acted against the doctor rather than the virus at a time when it could have been contained within a small perimeter are guilty of the mass murder of at least 15,000 victims of Covid-19 ( a figure that could reach into the millions) and the shutdown of the global economy consequent to the emergence of the pandemic.
Throughout January, when it was clear that the highly infectious killer novel coronavirus was on the loose, not even in China was the alarm sounded with sufficient force. Searches for the virus on Baidu were muted until January 23, 2020, soon after Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping assumed direct control of the fightback and sealed off Wuhan from the rest of the country. Interestingly, although searches on Baidu ( mostly within China) were low in number throughout the period leading up to the lockdown, Google searches from the rest of the world were rising.
Another reason why Covid-19 formed and subsequently grew into a pandemic was the fact that markets offering live birds,animals, mammals and sea species of different kinds continued to function throughout China despite the 2003 SARS epidemic demonstrating the danger of allowing such retail commerce. Several studies conducted by Chinese experts warned of the risk to public health caused by such trade, but the extensive machinery of the Communist Party and the state run by it failed to pay heed and bring such activities to a halt. This led towards the close of 2019 to the global calamity that emerged in the winter of last year from the "live food" market in Wuhan.
In the absence of a clear indication of the extreme seriousness of the situation from either the Chinese government or the World Health Organisation, governments across the world hesitated to take action. In the UK or Italy, for example, flights from and to Wuhan were allowed to land and take off even while India had shut its airports to all traffic from and to China. The impression even within the US was that the outbreak would be contained even within China, and that the risk to the rest of the world was negligible, a misreading of the situation that shows the incompetence of US agencies in ascertaining what the factual conditions in China actually were. The major powers believed that Chinese authorities would rapidly bring the situation under control and not allow it to spread. Such action finally took place during the second half of January, but not until CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping directly intervened to lead the fight against a virus that by that stage threatened to drag China into an economic quagmire and a public health nightmare.
Once the crisis became obvious, among the first of world leaders to act was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who barred entry of visitors from China, following the examples of Taiwan and Singapore. Should India escape an elevated curve for community transmission or Stage III of the Covid-19 outbreak, the credit will go to Modi for his unprecedented action in first blocking access to India from China and thereafter wisely extending visa cancellations to Europe, at a time when it was not yet certain that the European Union had become the epicentre of a health emergency that was coming under control in China.
Subsequently, the rest of the world was cut off from India. On March 19, Prime Minister Modi gave a historic call for an all-day "Janata Curfew" a few days later, a measure designed to break the chain of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, assisted by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Heath Minister Harsh Vardhan have initiated multiple steps to protect the 1.29 billion people of India from going the Iran or Italy way during the present pandemic. If only authorities in Hubei had heeded Dr Wenliang Li rather than persecuted him, both China as well as the rest of the world would have been spared the situation that is now deluging the world. If only the rest of the world had been alerted to the immensity of the crisis by January 1, 2020 rather than only after the sealing off of Wuhan was announced on January 23, the global economy would not have been as close to the ICU that it is now, and countless may have been saved.
The Covid-19 pandemic shows the importance of transmitting bad news up the administrative ladder at speed, especially in governance systems where only good news gets moved upwards while bad news gets suppressed, as the novel coronavirus outbreak in Hubei initially was for six precious weeks after its toxicity and incurable nature was accepted by Hubei authorities in mid-November, reaching the highest levels of the Chinese system residing in Beijing only by 27 December, 2019. It took a further three weeks before President Xi decided to directly intervene and order unprecedented steps which jolted the world out of its complacency. Nine weeks that have shaken the world. Nine weeks during which action could have been taken to ensure that the deep,dark pit that first China,then Europe, and now the US and others in the global community have fallen into could have been avoided.
The contrasting examples of China in 2019 and India in 2018 show what a difference a quick and effective response to a disease makes. Like Covid-19, the Nipah virus that struck Kerala on May 2,2018 originated in the bat population. In coordination with the National Institute of Virology in Pune and the Manipal Institute of Virology, the Kerala state government immediately placed more than 2300 individuals in the districts of Malappuram and Kozhikode in quarantine, and imported a drug from Australia that had not yet completed testing for general use. After confirming that the outbreak was a potential health hazard, the state government issued an advisory on May 23 and joined hands with the central government to access what knowledge about the disease (which is fatal in almost 90% of cases) was available globally. Useful information was secured from Malaysia, especially relating to treatment, that ensured the saving of a two patients, while 17 died. The Nipah outbreak was officially declared over on 10 June, less than six weeks after the first case was identified in the Government Medical College, Kozhikode.
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#Should India escape an elevated curve for community transmission of the Covid-19 outbreak, the credit will go to Modi for his unprecedented action in first blocking access to India from China and thereafter wisely extending visa cancellations to Europe.
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As mentioned, when a doctor in Wuhan warned that a new virus was on the loose and needed to be eliminated quickly, rather than act upon his suggestion, the provincial authorities labelled him as "anti-state" and forced him to write a confession that he was nothing but an alarmist. This while the novel coronavirus was spreading like a blaze among the people during the final weeks of 2019. It was only in the very close of that year when provincial authorities conveyed the depth of the problem to the leadership in Beijing. By that time, several million people had left Hubei and gone to other parts of China as well as abroad. Several of them were carriers, many rendered more deadly because they themselves had no symptoms of the disease that they were passing on to any individual who came in contact with them or with any surface touched by them.
Unlike the case of Kerala government which alerted the central government as soon as the first case of Nipah was detected, Chinese provincial authorities continued to believe that the infection could be localised, and that they could handle it o their own. By their hesitation in conveying bad news to a higher - indeed, the highest - level of the Chinese governance system, these officials have caused a global disaster. After getting information of the outbreak of this new disease, it took a further three weeks for the central authorities to sound the alarm globally. Only by the close of January 2020, after President Xi Jinping took the unprecedented step of closing off an entire city of 11 million and a province from the rest of the country did governments across the world realize that they were facing a public health disaster. Some responded swiftly - including India and Singapore - while others such as Italy and France failed to understand the danger to their own public.
First Singapore and then India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi shut the entry door to visitors from China. Later, when it became clear that Europe was badly infected with Covid-19, visitors from across Europe were blocked from coming to India. Unfortunately, several foreign tourists were already in the country, while later on, Indian citizens who had been visiting Europe returned. Some within these two groups brought with them the novel coronavirus. Coordinated action by the PMO, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Health Ministry ensured that community spread was prevented, at least till the time of writing this report. Should India escape the ravages of Stage III ( community spread) or have a very shallow curve of such infections, it would go as mentioned earlier to the credit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been assisted by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Union Health Minister Harshvardhan.
From the start, they understood the depth of the calamity that could befall India were the most extreme action not taken, action that they ( with the assistance of the Indian Council for Medical Research) took from the very start of the period when they first were made aware of the depths of the crisis through the Wuhan lockdown. Avoiding the worst would also go to the credit of the people of India, for Covid-19 can only be eliminated by a community effort involving every citizen. Just as a single thread can unravel a fabric, a single individual can put to naught efforts at containing Covid-19. The call for social distancing given by the Prime Minister on March 19 needs to be obeyed by the entire population, so that India escapes the ravages of the disease in a manner that Italy or Iran have been unable to do because social distancing was not taken seriously by their populations in time.
By contrast, in India Prime Minister Modi has been able to motivate the overwhelming majority of the population to practice safe conduct, although there remain a few citizens who are irresponsible enough to risk calamity for other citizens and the economy through flouting the few simple rules needed to protect both themselves as well as the nation from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
That the Government of India has had to rely even during the Covid-19 epidemic on a law that was first brought into effect in 1897 shows the need to ensure that the overwhelmingly colonial-era system of laws and regulations still faithfully adhered to by the governance mechanism needs to change. The Indian Penal Code has to reflect not 19th century but 21st century values and needs. The new structure should reflect the importance of involving Civil Society in the processes of governance through formal methods of consultation and monitoring, rather than concentrating such authority solely in the Civil Service.
Freedoms taken away by the addition of the First Amendment to the Constitution of India should be restored, while the legal system needs to deliver transparent justice ( including through live streaming of all court proceedings) that takes decreed within a time frame that is closer to that of other major economies. An audit needs to be conducted by an independent authority of the economic and financial effects of court judgments, many of which lead to substantial consequences,including the shutting down of several industrial units. Such an audit is also called for where the National Green Tribunal is concerned. India must certainly be as green and as filled with sustainability as possible, but this must be in a manner that takes into account the needs of the human population for income and employment, the foundation for a good life.
Several NGOs recommend measures that assume that human beings have no right to rights and that decisions should be taken irrespective of the human cost, as for example in the forced closing of large units rather than making them adopt clean technologies and continue operations. A table showing the number of cases as well as the time taken for disposal by each member of the Bench needs to be prepared for courts and placed online. The country has been waiting for decades for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who would ensure that the judicial reforms needed for transparency and accountability within this very powerful Estate of the State get carried out, and hopefully such reforms will not long remain unfulfilled. India has an exceptionally qualified judiciary, and as such it is reasonable to believe that such necessary reforms are not an impossibility but can become a reality that reinforces public confidence in the judiciary.
While the public health effects of the Covid-19 epidemic are being energetically tackled by the Modi government, what is as important is the health of the economy. A three month moratorium on loan repayments and interest payments both in the case of private moneylender loans and those of the banking system need to be enforced, so as to ensure that a flood of NPAs and bankruptcies do not get caused by circumstances beyond the control of the financial and economic victims of the 2020 public health emergency.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak of the UK has put in place a scheme to ensure that 80% of the salaries of workers get paid by the state, so that layoffs are minimised. Retraining workers and restarting businesses from scratch are very difficult, and a similar scheme needs to be carried out in India for workers and employees. Compensation can be paid for salaries upto a maximum of Rs 10 lakhs per person annualised, so that businesses do not retrench citizens during these months of Covid-19 stress. Former Finance Minister P Chdambaram has evidently never travelled to Europe in his life, for he kept on telling taxpayers that the rate of tax was the same as in several countries in the EU. Chidambaram was clearly unaware of the many benefits that citizens in those parts of the world get from the state. In India, even the poor pawn their gold jewellery to avoid public hospitals and schools, not to talk of the average taxpayer. Chidambaram clearly believes that government schools, hospitals and other services are at the same level as in the EU, and may be they are for a VVIP like him, but not for 99.9 per cent of the citizens of India.
There has long been need for direct and indirect tax reform as well as an overhaul of a regulatory structure that strangulates industry and trade while doing nothing to end endemic corruption, as for example through using corrupt officials to hound innovators in India so that alternatives to what they have discovered may get imported. It is not an accident that India is dependent on imports for so many critical items, and the answer lies in the obstacles placed on domestic producers in order to clear the way for imports.
The Covid-19 epidemic is a crisis that needs to jolt the governance system into making itself such as to give the people of India the policy ecosystem needed for double digit growth. That is the challenge facing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he works round the clock to ensure that India recovers from a fever that has travelled from Wuhan to all parts of the world.
(The author is Professor of Geopolitics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education)
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"URGENT NEED : Time to Bell the Cat" : 30-Mar-2020 : Adv Ashwini Upadhyaya : Organiser
The person, against whom charges have been framed in serious offences, should be barred from contesting the election and becoming political office bearer. A convicted person should also be debarred from contesting election and or becoming political office bearer for life
“It needs little argument to hold that the heart of the Parliamentary system is free and fair elections periodically held, based on adult franchise, although social and economic democracy may demand much more.” (Supreme Court of India in 1978)
This one quote, although more than four decades old, speaks volume on the importance of democracy, and hence, purity in the election process. It is trite to say but important to note that a fair and unbiased electoral process, with greater citizen participation, is fundamental to safeguarding the values of democracy.
Maintaining the quality of the electoral process, however, requires a multi-pronged approach, which includes removing the influence of money and criminal elements in politics, expediting the disposal of election petitions, introducing internal democracy and financial transparency in the functioning of the political parties, strengthening the Election Commission of India, and regulating opinion polls and curbing paid news. Unfortunately, these are some of the issues, which have plagued the Indian electoral system over the decades and have eroded the trust of many people in the country. Consequently, over the years, a number of committees have examined some of the major challenges and issues affecting India’s electoral system and have made suggestions accordingly. Both the Law Commission in its 170th Report on “Reform of the Electoral Laws” in 1999 and the Election Commission in its seminal 2004 “Proposed Electoral Reforms” report have addressed some of these challenges. Other Committees and Commissions, which have examined these issues, are: The Goswami Committee on Electoral Reforms (1990); The Vohra Committee Report (1993); The Indrajit Gupta Committee on State Funding of Elections (1998); The Law Commission Report on Reform of the Electoral Laws (1999); The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (2001); The ECI Proposed Electoral Reforms (2004) and The Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2008). Unfortunately, their recommendations were not followed by legislative action, required for the enhancement of the quality of democracy, by reducing the influence of money and media in politics and ensuring free and fair elections.
Especially in the context of ethnic divisions such as caste and religion, criminals are able to get votes based on their caste or religious affiliation, their money power, their perceived willingness to ‘bend’, if not break, the law to favour their constituently and also because of coercion and intimidation including their rivals. Criminals, in turn, have no interest in standing as independents but stand as candidates of political parties. Criminals want to stand as candidates of political parties because parties are still connected to powerful leaders, families, ethnic groups and social bases. Aspiring candidates can tap into these networks to expand their appeal beyond their own narrow support bases. Second, in a country with high rates of poverty and illiteracy, party symbols hold great weight; they serve as an important visual cue through which millions of voters connect to politics. As such, the historical legacy of parties matter a great deal in Indian democracy.
The consequences of permitting criminals to contest and become legislators are extremely determental to for our democracy and secularism: (i) during the electoral process itself, not only do they deploy “enormous amounts of illegal money” to influence the outcome but also intimidate voters and rival candidates. (ii) Thereafter, in our weak rule-of-law context, once they gain entry to the governance as legislators, they interfere with, and influence the functioning of government machinery in favour of themselves and members of their organisation by corrupting government officers and, where if does not work, by using their contacts with Ministers to make threats of transfer and initiation of disciplinary proceedings. Some even become Ministers, which makes the situation worse. (iii) Legislators with criminal antecedents also attempt to subvert the administration of justice and attempt by hook or crook to prevent cases against themselves from being concluded and, where possible, to obtain acquittals. Long delays in disposal of cases against sitting MP’s and MLA’s and low conviction rates are testimony to their influence.
The empirical evidence supports the view that the current legislative framework permits criminals to become a legislator. It (a) interferes with the purity and integrity of the electoral process; (b) violates the right to choose freely the candidate of the voter’s choice and, therefore, the freedom of expression of the voter under Article 19(1)(a); (c) amounts to a subversion of democracy, which is part of the basic structure; and, finally, (d) is antithetical to the rule of law which is at core of Article 14 of the Constitution of India.
Criminalisation of politics in India has only grown. National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) have analyzed the self-sworn affidavits of 539 out of 542 MPs of the present Lok Sabha. Elections in Vellore constituency had been cancelled and 3 MPs were not analyzed due to unavailability of their clear and complete affidavits on the ECI website at the time of making the report. Out of 539 MPs, 233 (43%) MPs have declared criminal cases against themselves. Out of 542 winners analyzed after 2014 General Election, 185 (34%) had declared criminal cases against themselves and out of 543 winners analyzed after 2009 Lok Sabha election, 162 (30%) had declared criminal cases against themselves. There is an increase of 44% in the number of MPs with declared criminal cases since 2009.
Presently 159 (29%) MPs have declared serious criminal cases including cases related to rape, murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, crimes against women etc. Out of 542 winners analyzed after 2014 Lok Sabha elections, 112 (21%) had declared serious criminal cases against themselves. Out of 543 winners analyzed after 2009 Lok Sabha election, 76 (14%) had declared serious criminal cases against themselves. So, there is an increase of 109 % in the number of winners with declared serious criminal cases since 2009.
Kuriakose from Idukki Constituency has declared 204 criminal cases including cases related to culpable homicide, house trespass, robbery, criminal intimidation etc. Total 30 MPs of the present Lok Sabha, have declared cases of attempt to murder (Section 307), 19 MPs have declared cases related to crimes against women and out of these 19 MPs, 3 MPs have declared cases related to rape (IPC Section-376). Total 29 MPs have declared cases related to hate speech.
ADR Report indicates that the chances of winning for a candidate with declared criminal cases in the Lok Sabha 2019 are 15.5 % whereas, for a candidate with a clean background, it is 4.7 %. Total 116 (39%) out of 301 winners from BJP, 29 (57%) out of 51 winners from INC, 10 (43%) out of 23 winners from DMK, 9 (41%) out of 22 winners fielded by AITC and 13 (81%) out of 16 winners from JD(U) have declared criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits. Total 87 (29%) out of 301 winners from BJP, 19 (37%) out of 51 winners from INC, 6 (26%) out of 23 winners from DMK, 4 (18%) out of 22 winners fielded by AITC and 8 (50%) out of 16 winners from JD(U) have declared serious criminal cases against themselves in their affidavits.
Out of the 539 MPs analyzed, 475 (88%) are crorepathis. Out of 542 winners analyzed during Lok Sabha 2014 election, 443 (82%) winners were crorepathis. Out of 543 winners analyzed during Lok Sabha 2009 election, 315 (58%) winners were crorepathis. Total 265 (88%) out of 301 MPs of BJP, 43 (84%) out of 51 MPs of INC, 22 (96%) out of 23 MPs of DMK, 20 (91%) out of 22 MPs of AITC, 19 (86%) out of 22 MPs of YSRCP and 18 (100%) MPs of SS have declared assets worth more than Rs. 1 crore. The chance of winning for a crorepathi candidate in the Lok Sabha 2019 is 21%, whereas chance of winning for a candidate with assets less than Rs. 1 crore is 1%. A total of 4 out of the 539 winners analyzed have not declared their PAN details. The average assets of 225 re-elected MPs fielded by various parties including independents in 2014 was Rs 17.07 crore. The average asset of these 225 re-elected MPs in 2019 is Rs 21.94 crore. The average asset growth for these 225 re-elected MPs, between the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019 is Rs 4.87 crore. Average percentage growth in assets for the 225 re-elected MPs is 29%.
Presently, 128 (24%) MPs have declared their educational qualification to be between 5th pass and 12th pass, while 392 (73%) MPs have declared having an educational qualification of graduate and above. One MP has declared himself to be just literate and One MP is illiterate. 194 (36%) MPs have declared their age to be between 25 and 50 years while 343 (64%) MPs have declared their age to be between 51 and 80 years. Two MPs have declared they are more than 80 years old. Presently, there are 77 (14%) women MPs. Out of 542 winners analyzed in the Lok Sabha elections 2014, 62 (11%) winners were women. Out of 543 winners analyzed in the Lok Sabha elections 2009, 59 (11%) winners were women.
What is alarming is that the percentage of candidates with criminal past and their chances of winning have actually increased steadily over the years. In fact, the empirical analysis shows that, where the charges against a candidate are serious, it slightly increases the statistical probability of his winning the election. Criminals who earlier used to help politicians win elections in the hope of getting favours appear to have cut out the “middle man” in favour of entering politics themselves. Political parties, in turn, have become steadily more reliant on criminals as candidates not only because they “self-finance” their own elections in an era where election contests have become phenomenally expensive but also because candidates with criminal antecedents are more likely to win than “clean” candidates. Political parties are competing with each other in a race to the bottom because they cannot afford to leave their competitors free to recruit criminals. Despite the above data, the Government has not taken apposite steps to tackle the menace of criminalisation.
India’s democratic setup is a paradigm for many countries in the world due to its remarkable success over the past seven decades. The heart of India’s democratic system witnesses regular elections with the participation of the largest electorate in the world. In order to safeguard the core values of fair and free elections in this dynamic scenario, it is important to have a just and unbiased electoral process with greater citizen participation. Thus, in accordance to the responsibility bestowed upon by the Constitution of India, the Election Commission of India has always remained actively involved in finding out ways through which the purity and integrity of the election process are preserved. However, there are certain challenges and issues that the electoral system has faced over the years. Trust and confidence of citizens in the electoral system can be affected if these challenges remain unattended. Thus, keeping in view these difficulties the Election Commission of India after conducting extensive study and research recommends certain changes that need to be taken up expeditiously to amend certain provisions of law. Taking forward a step in this direction, the Commission have made several electoral proposals to remove the glaring lacunae in the law. Many of these proposals have been already put forth by the Commission have remained unresolved. Some of the proposals pertain to areas which have not been taken up previously by the Commission but arose due to the implementation of certain laws or on the directions issued by the Supreme Court and the High Courts. Commission considers it necessary to put all proposals on electoral reforms in the public domain for the benefit of people. The Election Commission sincerely believes that these suggested reforms will prove to be extremely useful in addressing the existing issues and challenges and would go a long way in enhancing the quality of democracy.
One of the notable features for which India is known to the world is its electoral Democracy. However, in order to call a system truly Democratic, it is necessary that it must reflect the political and socioeconomic aspirations of its people. The issue of electoral reforms has been taken up by Parliament, the Government, the Judiciary, the Media and the Election Commission on numerous occasions. The Election Commission during all these times has striven to bring positive changes in the electoral system for better implementation. There has been various correspondence exchanged between the government and the Election Commission to ensure that the required electoral reforms are brought in place. However, for strengthening the existing system and removing the difficulties arising in ensuring free and fair elections the Election Commission stresses that various steps are required to be taken for the better practice in election-related matters. Maintaining the purity and transparency of the election process is a very challenging job and involves a lot of inherent complexities. However, the Commission in its endeavour has always tried to ensure the fairness in elections by putting in tremendous efforts in line with all stakeholders. Therefore, these proposals besides giving a perspective on the challenges faced during the elections, seek to provide a comprehensive framework about the ways in which these challenges can be effectively dealt.
Government should take appropriate steps to set minimum qualification and maximum age limit for contesting the election. A Legislators Eligibility Test (LET) on the lines of Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) can be started to make it more effective. It is also essential to ban the Legislators from practising other professions till they demit the office. Political Donation in cash should be restricted to 2,000 rupees per person per year. Political parties should be brought under the RTI and Tax Relief should be given to only those who contest the election and win the seat.
pecial Courts should be set up for MLAs and MPs in each district Court and every High Court to decide the cases of legislators within one year. The person, against whom charges have been framed in serious offences, should be barred from contesting the election and becoming political office bearer and a convicted person should be debarred from contesting the election and becoming political office bearer for life.
Election Commission should take steps to rename political parties having names related to caste, religion, language, and region and a Law should be enacted to curtail misuse of caste, religion, language and region for electoral gain. It’s high time to enact a Law to promote inner-party democracy and financial transparency and define the roles and responsibilities of legislators. Past experience confirms that the FPTP system is not very effective hence Hybrid System (FPTP and Proportional Representation System) should be adopted.
There must be a complete ban on govt-sponsored advertisement, paid news, political advertisement and Opinion Poll in the last six months. Cooling period should be five days and there must be a complete ban on advertisement and campaigning. Common Electoral Rolls should be used in all elections and Totalizer should be used for counting votes. Election Commission should ascertain the feasibility of Aadhaar based voting system and there must be re-poll if NOTA gets maximum votes. Post Offices should be used as nodal agency for voter registration and there must be a ban on contesting for the same office from more than one constituency.
Appointment of Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners should be through Collegium of Prime Minister, Chief Justice of India and Leader of Opposition. Election Commission should have the Rule Making power like Supreme Court and power of de-registration of political parties. An independent secretariat of Election Commission is also essential for complete independence. Budget of Election Commission should be charged from the consolidated fund.
(The writer is an advocate, Supreme Court of India)
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JAI HIND
JAI BHARATHAM
VANDHE MATHARAM
BHARAT MATHA KI JAI.
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