AP, India :
Of the dozens of criminal charges Atiq Ahmed faces, the one blaming him for the murder of a political rival tops the list. But that isn’t stopping the state lawmaker from running for a seat in India’s Parliament.
More than 1,200 candidates running for 545 seats in the national election face criminal charges including rape, kidnapping, extortion and murder, according to a tally by the Association for Democratic Reform. “Criminalization of politics is a bad trend. Earlier politicians used criminals. Now the criminals themselves have entered politics,” said Rituraj Sharma, a 21-year-old first-time voter.
In much of India, violence and politics go hand in hand. Political parties use local strongmen to intimidate political rivals. Ahmed, who denies all the charges and calls them politically motivated, is just one of hundreds of Indian politicians who activists say operate at the crossroads of crime and politics.
While not unique to India, it stifles progress for the country of 1.2 billion people to have a political class unable, or unwilling, to root out criminals and keeping out idealistic aspirants. On Wednesday, voters in Uttar Pradesh – the most populous state in India – will stream into voting booths where at least 50 candidates, including Ahmed, are on the ballot.
Indian law only bars a person from running for political office once they have been convicted by a court and that can take years, even decades, as cases wind their way through woefully overburdened courts.
Fearing violence because of the candidates’ backgrounds, the state election commission has declared 10 of the 15 constituencies “red constituencies” and will take extraordinary measures to ensure that the vote is peaceful, said Uttar Pradesh’s chief electoral officer, Umesh Sinha.
“We deploy additional security forces with the candidates having criminal records. The gangs these politicians are associated with are well known and police will keep an eye on the members of these gangs,” Sinha said.
