Criminalisation of politics

THE death sentence awarded to Anand Mohan Singh and two other politicians from Bihar by the Additional District and Sessions Judge Ramshreshta Rai for the murder of IAS officer, G Krishnaiah must bring some relief to those who were losing hope in the judicial processes in the country. It now remains to be seen if this Bihar politician, who so far has been a law unto himself, manages to frustrate the due process of law in the higher judiciary. There are many reasons for this. Already, Anand Mohan Singh is being presented as a victim of conspiracy. By visiting the condemned prisoner, George Fernandes seems to have decided to take up this cause rather than be bold and say that the conviction is a step ahead in ensuring a democratic and egalitarian India that Ram Manohar Lohias dreamt of. Some of the other reasons relate to the socio-political scene in Bihar. The ability of the litigant, the accused in this instance, to engage the best of the lawyers is a factor in influencing the judicial process. The prosecution, meanwhile, depends on law officers appointed by the Government of the day. Many such appointments are based on partisan political considerations rather than legal acumen. There have been instances when the accused have been found trying to influence the law officer of the prosecution to ensure that he presents a bad case in the court. The BMW case involving the Nandas was one such instance where a vigilant media successfully frustrated the conspiracy. Presumably, for every such reported instance, there could well be several others which have not have been reported. And the judge cannot be blamed when the prosecution fails to present a sustainable case.Though the media is now far more vigilant than in the past such vigilance is restricted to cases that involve the urban upper middle classes and very rarely is the media professional seen to have taken up the cause of the poor and the marginalised. This feature of the eighties, when the Bhagalpur blinding, the sale of girl children for prostitution or the condition of prisoners were taken up by the media, is no longer prominent.Anand Mohan and his wife Lovely Anand (who has been awarded a life imprisonment) are powerful individuals. Both have been MPs and their record is evidence of the scant regard for the principles of law as well as morality in public life. To expect them to change is unrealistic.Their political affiliation is to the Janata Dal (United), the party in power in Bihar. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will now have to ensure that the law officers of the Bihar Government, who are there in that position only because they belong to the Janata Dal (United) or the BJP (a partner in the coalition Government) do everything to ensure that two of the ruling party luminaries are punished for murder. This may well be too much to expect from a party that has not deemed it necessary to even expel them.Others found guilty in this case include Munna Shukla, a JD-U legislator from Lalganj, Shashi Shekhar Thakur and Harendra Kumar, who lost the last Lok Sabha election as a JD-U candidates in May 2004. Considering that these are such political heavyweights, it will be a miracle if the party ensures that the law takes its course.Moreover, all those convicted in this case are known to have several criminal cases against them. Munna Shukla, for instance, is a history-sheeter. They were all admitted into the party knowing very well that they believed in violent ways to ensure their status in their villages and towns across the State. In fact, it could be argued that the JD (U) took them in only because they had a criminal antecedent and this was useful or even necessary for the party to establish itself in Bihar. The JD(U) alone is not guilty of this. Lalu Prasad has his Mohammed Shahabuddin and Pappu Yadav, and Ram Vilas Paswan has Surajbhan Singh in his party. To say therefore that the criminal-politician nexus is entrenched in Bihar would be to state the obvious.There is another aspect to the Anand Mohan Singh story, the socio-political scene in Bihar. The Bihar People’s Party, in fact, was founded in 1994, to represent the upper castes in the State against the rise of backward caste assertion that marked the arrival of Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar. This upper caste consolidation was aimed at restoring the feudal order over the OBCs and the Dalits. The objective constituted a conspiracy against the Constitution and the various provisions in it.The party nominee, Lovely Anand, won the Vaishali Lok Sabha seat in a byelection in 1994 and Anand Mohan emerged as the representative of the upper castes across Bihar at a time when the Ranvir Sena, a mercenary force consisting of the poor among the Rajputs financed by the rich Rajputs and equipped with sophisticated weapons, went about killing Dalits across Bihar. The links between the BPP and the Ranvir Sena were historical if not organisational. The IAS officer Krishnaiah, whom the mob incited by Anand Mohan had lynched to death in 1994, was a Dalit. Incidentally, the Janata Dal (United)-BJP Government in Bihar, elected to power in May 2005, represents the forces against the backward caste assertion and in that sense belong to the same legacy as that of the Bihar People’s Party. Nitish Kumar may have been a participant in the various struggles for the empowerment of the OBCs and the rights of the Dalits in the past. But that is history. In May 2005, Nitish Kumar, led a socio-political alliance that was based on the consolidation of the anti-Lalu forces. And this consolidation happened because the castes remain inimical to the idea of equality of all the citizens irrespective of caste.