No criminals in politics: New campaign launched

A nationwide campaign against criminals in politics, prompted by the nationwide outrage over the Mumbai terror attack, was launched here on Thursday. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 20, 2009, 01:02:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A nationwide campaign against criminals in politics, prompted by the nationwide outrage over the Mumbai terror attack, was launched here on Thursday.

Backed by top corporate bodies like NASSCOM and FICCI, along with over 2,000 NGOs and alumni of IITs and IIMs, the campaign, ‘No Criminals in Politics’, will inform voters through an SMS (567678) feedback on the past criminal record of current MPs and candidates for the 15th Lok Sabha elections.

Launching the campaign, former Reserve Bank of India governor and chairperson of Public Interest Foundation, Bimal Jalan, said that of the 543 Lok Sabha MPs, 128 had self-confessed cases pending against them whereas 24 MPs had a series of charges of murder or attempt to murder to their credit.

Jalan said the aim of the campaign would be three-pronged. First, it would ask the political parties not to give tickets to candidates with criminal backgrounds in the coming Lok Sabha elections.

Second, it would apprise the voters of criminal antecedents of candidates in each constituency.

Third, it would request voters not to support political parties that field candidates with criminal charges anywhere in the country. The campaign would be carried out SMS and audio-visual tools.

The campaign, which has Bollywood lyricist Javed Akhtar, noted lawyer Fali Nariman and Rajya Sabha MP Rahul Bajaj voicing their concern against criminals in politics, will also include stars such as Aamir Khan.

“We saw a lot of resentment against the present political system. It was then that we professionals thought that the Lok Sabha polls would be the time to do something to improve governance in our country. It led to the birth of this campaign,” said R. Gurumoorthy, coordinator for the campaign.

“‘No Criminals in Politics’ is a step to make citizens aware of their right to vote. It is a campaign to alert them that they also have the right to demand for the right candidate,” said a launch statement released on behalf of 21 organisations, including the Association for Democratic Reforms and Jaagore.com.

Voters can register for the campaign through an SMS to 567678 or logging into the website www.NoCriminals.org.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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